Power and Persuasion: Ideology and Rhetoric in Communist Yugoslavia, 1944-1953

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Power and Persuasion

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Power and Persuasion Ideology and Rhetoric in Communist Yugoslavia 1944-1953

Carol S. Lilly

Westview PREES A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Copyright © 2001 by Westview Press, A Member of the Perseus Books Group Published in 2001 in the United States of America by Westview Press, 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80301-2877, and in the United Kingdom by Westview Press, 12 Hid's Copse Road, Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ Find us on the World Wide Web at www.westviewpress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lilly, Carol S, 1959Power and persuasion : ideology and rhetoric in communist Yugoslavia, 1944-1953 / by Carol S. Lilly. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8133-3825-5 1. Yugoslavia—Politics and government—1945-1980. 2. Yugoslavia—Cultural policy. 3. Rhetoric—Political aspects—Yugoslavia. 4. Comminication—Political aspects—Yugoslavia. I. Title DR1302.L55 2000 949.702—dc21

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The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. PERSEUS

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Contents Acronyms Acknowledgements

vii xi

Introduction

1

Note About Sources, 9 Notes, 11 Part One 1

Setting the Stage Historical Review, 17 External and Internal Constraints, 25 Notes, 31

17

2

Tools of the Trade: The Apparatus for Cultural Change The Communist Party, 35 The State, 42 Mass Organizations, 48 Notes, 54

35

3

Problems of Persuasion Internal Disunity, 61 "Kadrovi Re avaj u Sve"—Cadres Determine Everything, 66 Notes, 71

61

Part Two 4

Taking Power: Cultural Manipulation and Revolutionary Change Compromise and Moderation, 77 Partisanstvo in Postwar Rhetoric, 86 Pragmatism and Partisanstvo, 92 Conclusion, 105

77

v

vi

Contents

Notes, 107 5

Constructing the Framework; Mobilization and Control

115

Shockwork and Competition, 118 Youth Volunteer Labor Brigades, 120 Economic Tasks and Education, 124 Culture and the Media, 128 Notes, 132 6

The Cultural Transformation Begins

137

New Goals and New Expectations, 138 Culture and Ideology, 140 Educating the Educators, 148 Conclusion, 153 Notes, 154 7

The Cultural Transformation Delayed

161

The Soviet-Yugoslav Split, 162 Two Steps Backward, 165 Three Steps Forward, 175 Conclusion, 189 Notes, 191 8

The Cultural Transformation Transformed

198

1950: A Turning Point, 198 Further Reforms, 208 The Sixth Party Congress and the Fourth Congress of the People's Front, 210 Playing by New Rules, 214 Notes, 222 9

The Cultural Transformation Abandoned

229

Youth and Culture After the Soviet-Yugoslav Split, 229 Conclusion, 240 Notes, 242 Conclusion Bibliography Index

245 253 00

Acronyms

The following abbreviations for archives, archival funds, individual works, organizations, and institutions have been employed in the text and in footnotes. ACKSKJ

AFW/AFŽ AJ AVNOJ

CC/CK CKKPH CKKPHAP

CKKPJ

CKSKOJ

CO CPSU CPY CRPP CV DFJ FNRJ GK

Arhiv Centralnog komiteta Saveza komunista Jugoslavije (Archives of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia) Anti-fascist Front of Women/Anti-fašističkifrontžena Arhiv Jugoslavije (Archives of Yugoslavia) Anti-fašističko vijeće narodnog oslobodjenja Jugoslavije (Anti-fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia) Central Committee/Centralni komitet Centralni komitet Komunističke partije Hrvatske (Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia) Centralni komitet Komunističke partije Hrvatske, Agitprop (Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia, Department of Agitation and Propaganda) Centralni komitet Komunističke partije Jugoslavije (Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia) Centralni komitet Savez komunističke omladine Jugoslavije (Central Committee of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia) Centralni odbor (Central Council) Communist Party of the Soviet Union Communist Party of Yugoslavia Croat Republican Peasant Party Centralno vijeće/veće (Central Council) Demokratska federativna Jugoslavije Federativna Narodna Republika Jugoslavija (Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia) Gradski komitet (City Committee) vii

viii

HDA

JSRNJ KDAŽH KK KKU KPH KPJ KPO KPS KŠN KUD LCY LFVV LTU MK MNK MP NFH NFJ NOJ NOB NOH NSO OK OO PB PC PFY PK PKSKOJ-H

Acronyms

Hrvatski Državni Arhiv (Croatian State Archives, previously Archives of the Insitute for the History of the Workers' Movement of Croatia) Jedinstveni Sindikat Radnog Naroda Jugoslavije (United Trade Union of the Working People of Yugoslavia) Komitet za društvenu aktivnost žena Hrvatske (Committee for the Social Activity of Women of Croatia) Kotarski komitet (Regional Committee) Komitet za kulturu i umetnost (Committee for Culture and Art) Komunistička partija Hrvatske (Communist Party of Croatia) Komunistička partija Jugoslavije (Communist Party of Yugoslavia) Kulturno-prosvetno odeljenje (Cultural-Educational Department) Komunistička partija Srbije (Communist Party of Serbia) Komitet za škole i nauku (Committee for Schools and Science) Kulturno-umetničko društvo (Cultural-Artistic Society) League of Communists of Yugoslavia Lifond Veljka Vlahoviča (Personal fund of Veljko Vlahovič) League of Trade Unions Mesni komitet (Local Committee) Ministarstvo za nauku i kulturu Ministarstvo prosvete (Ministry of Education) Narodni front Hrvatske (People's Front of Croatia) Narodni front Jugoslavije (People's Front of Yugoslavia) Narodna omladina Jugoslavije (People's Youth of Yugoslavia) Narodnooslobodilačka borba (People's Liberation Struggle) Narodna omladina Hrvatske (People's Youth of Croatia) Narodna studentska omladina (People's Student Youth) Okružni/Oblasni komitet (District/Regional Committee) Okružni/Oblasni odbor (District/Regional Council) Politburo People's Council People's Front of Yugoslavia Pokrajinski komitet (Regional Committee) Pokrajinski komitet Savez komunističke omladine Jugoslavije za Hrvatsku (Regional Committee of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia for Croatia)

Acronyms

PWC PYY RKSSRNH

SAWPY SKJ SKOJ SRZ SSJ SSOJ SSRNJ UK UNRRA UPA USAOH USAOJ VSSH YPA ZV

ix

Peasant Working Cooperative People's Youth of Yugoslavia Raionski komitet Socljalističkog saveza radnog naroda Hrvatske (Regional Committee of the Socialist League of the Working People of Croatia) Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Yugoslavia Savez komunista Jugoslavije (League of Communists of Yugoslavia) Savez komunističke omladine Jugoslavije (League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia) Seljačka radna zadruga (Peasant Working Cooperative) Savez sindikata Jugoslavije (League of Trade Unions of Yugoslavia) Socijalistički savez omladine Jugoslavije (Socialist League of Youth of Yugoslavia) Socijalistički savez radnog naroda Jugoslavije (Socialist League of the Working People of Yugoslavia) Univerzitetskii komitet (University Committee) United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Uprava za propagandu i agitaciju (Administration for Propaganda and Agitation) Ujedinjeni savez anti-fašištičke omladine Hrvatske (United League of Anti-Fascist Youth of Croatia) Ujedinjeni savez anti-fašističke omladine Jugoslavije (United League of Anti-Fascist Youth of Yugoslavia) Viječe Savez sindikata Hrvatske (Council of the League of Trade Unions of Croatia) Yugoslav People's Army Zemalsjko vijeće (Land Council)

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Acknowledgements As I sat down to write these acknowledgements, I found myself overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. That enormity stems in part from the many years that this work has been in progress; I chose the topic for my dissertation thesis in 1985, In the subsequent fifteen years, a great many people, as well as many academic and funding institutions, facilitated the research and writing of this study, I am grateful to all of them and fear that I may forget some. Should I do so, I apologize for it now. To begin with I must thank the library, staff, and, of course, faculty of Yale University where this project began. In particular, my thanks go to Professor Ivo Banac, my thesis advisor, who taught me more than I can say and without whose exacting guidance this work, however flawed now, would undoubtedly include many more errors. Thanks also to rny unofficial advisors at Yale, Paul Bushkovitch and Susan Woodward, who offered considerable additional advice and criticism, as well as moral support. Dr. Woodward, in particular, provided invaluable assistance thanks to her incredible breadth of knowledge and remarkable listening and teaching skills. Research for this monograph then continued at numerous libraries and archives in the United States and the former Yugoslavia. The librarians at the library and archives of the Hoover Institution in Stanford were especially gracious and helpful. I thank them all, but especially Linda Wheeler, In the former Yugoslavia, my work was greatly facilitated by the professional and friendly staff at the University Library and the Institute for the Contemporary History of Croatia in Zagreb, and in Belgrade at the Institute for Contemporary History, the Archives of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the Archives of Yugoslavia, and the National Library of Serbia. As important as their help, of course, was the funding which made that research possible. Over the last 15 years, I have been fortunate to receive generous grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board, The American Council of Learned Societies, and the University of Nebraska at Kearney's Research Services Council. I am extremely grateful to all of them! On a more personal note, I would like also to thank all those in the former Yugoslavia who made my research trips there not just productive xi

xii

Acknowledgements

but absolutely fun! Two families in particular have given more to me than I can ever repay and, perhaps most important, formed within me a reserve of faith in and love for the people of that region strong enough to survive the miseries and tragedies of the last decade. My deepest thanks then go to Lela Baća and her family in Zaprešić, Croatia, and Momčilo Pavlović and his family in Sremčica and Lebane of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, A second reason for the size of my debt of gratitude is my firm belief in the values (at least for me) of collaboration. What that means in practice is that over the past years I have begged, bribed, or bullied numerous friends and colleagues into reading and critiquing my work. At the top of my list of regular readers are, of course, Melissa Bokovoy and Jill Irvine, my two closest colleagues in the field as well as two of my best friends. Close behind them are Nick Miller and Tom Clark, followed by James German, Charles Hanson, and back in the earliest stages of my research, John Buchanan and Carla Schmidt. Others who provided extremely valuable critiques were Gary Cohen, Martin Johnson, Dennison Rusinow, and the anonymous reviewers at Westview Press. Their comments have been enormously helpful and have clearly contributed a great deal to whatever virtues this book may possess. Its flaws and errors, of course, remain my own. In addition, of course, I thank Rob Williams, Carol Jones, Michelle Trader, and the rest of the professional staff at Westview Press for their work in bringing my manuscript to print. Finally, I thank all those whose daily friendship, support, and love helped me maintain a sense of perspective and carry out my work with commitment and even, on occasion, intensity but not obsession. They facilitated and encouraged my research and writing but also refused to let me neglect those other aspects of life that bring joy and satisfaction. For these gifts, I am especially grateful to my parents, Douglas and Judith Lilly, and to my husband and children, Rick, Daniela, and Max Garvue.

Introduction

When the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) took power after the Second World War, it had a vision for a new and better society—a society in which all humans would live together in peace and prosperity and in which their mutual exploitation would be eliminated. Based on the ideology of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (as amended by Vladimir Lenin), that vision was the party's ultimate goal and main source of legitimacy. Consequently, many party policies sought to achieve the social and cultural transformation inherent in that vision. Yet party leaders also faced innumerable practical and political problems associated first with maintaining power and rebuilding the Yugoslav economy, and later with retaining independence and economic viability in the face of Soviet and Eastern European hostility. Moreover, party leaders in Yugoslavia were not acting in a vacuum but had to take into account the preexisting societies and cultures.1 Indeed, Yugoslav Communists faced a particularly complex task as they confronted not one but a whole series of preexisting cultures based around the country's numerous constituent nations and national minorities. Hence, every attempt at change faced an array of deeply entrenched structures, institutions, values, and behavioral habits. In each case, Yugoslavia's Communists had to decide whether and how to undermine the extant cultures or to adopt and manipulate them for their own purposes. Postwar CPY policies thus reflect the party's struggle to find and hold a balance between its long-term goal of transforming society and culture2 and its immediate political and economic needs, between its revolutionary desire for change and its pragmatic need for security and stability. In its efforts to attain both political security and social change, the CPY employed a number of tools, including economic incentives, force, and persuasion. While party leaders often counted on the first two to realize political goals, they also saw persuasion as crucial for securing public acceptance of and participation in their political agenda. Persuasion was even more important to the social and cultural transformation required by the party's long-term vision for the future. After all, the party's ultimate goal required changes not only in the country's political and eco-

1

2

Introduction

nomic structure, but in its citizens—in their values, morals, goals, aesthetics, and social behavior.3 These new citizens would be strong, courageous, and hardworking, but also intelligent, educated, and highly cultured. Most of all, they would be people who recognized that the needs of society as a whole were more important than the needs of any one individual and who were prepared to give their all for that greater good, understanding that in so doing they would also be serving their own best interests. While party leaders did not hesitate to use force to achieve their ends, they believed that the final goal of communism could only be built with the voluntary cooperation and participation of the vast majority of the population. Consequently, persuasion was a vital component of the party's activities and party leaders desperately wanted it to succeed. This monograph documents the CPY's use of persuasive rhetoric by oral, written, and visual means for both its long-term transformative and short-term political goals in the years between the establishment of Communist power in Yugoslavia with the liberation of Belgrade in October 1944 and the end of the party's first reform era at the June 1953 Second Plenum of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY, formerly the CPY). It considers both the intentions and accomplishments of the party's persuasive strategies and shows the evolution of their content and form during the first nine years of Communist rule. In the process, it modifies existing historiography on early postwar Yugoslavia in several ways. Most historians of Yugoslavia designate the period from 1944 to 1949 as the "Stalinist" era, during which time the Yugoslav Communists were rigid and dogmatic ideologues who unreservedly drew nearly all their policies and institutions directly from Soviet models and imposed them on a helpless and passive population. The June 1948 split between Tito and Stalin, they then explain, brought about the next "reformist" era of Yugoslav history, from late 1949 to the Sixth Party Congress of November 1952. According to traditional views, the split caused a political and economic crisis that forced CPY leaders to renounce their Soviet-based policies and initiate a series of innovative political, social, and economic reforms. These reforms were designed to justify the continued tenure of CPY leaders in power despite Soviet hostility, secure Western economic aid, and pacify an increasingly dissatisfied population.4 These scholars clearly delineated the main events and issues relating to the Soviet-Yugoslav split and have offered many valuable insights into the development of communism in Yugoslavia. Their research established a solid foundation of knowledge on which all future studies of the topic must rely. For a variety of reasons, however (some clearly relating to the availability of sources), nearly all of these earlier scholars concentrated on the Soviet-Yugoslav split and its accompanying

Introduction

3

political and ideological changes, neglecting in the process the years between 1944 and 1948.5 My research into the 1944-1948 era led me to question many of the assumptions about the so-called Stalinist period. First of all, my study of rhetoric showed that while party leaders unquestionably drew on the Soviet experience, they were fully conscious well before 1948 that not all features of the Soviet example were worthy of emulation or suited to Yugoslavia's needs and conditions. Moreover, the evolving form and content of CPY rhetoric revealed party leaders who, even before the split, were not just ideologues committed to a Marxist-Leninist vision of the future but also very practical power politicians, willing and able to modify their policies in response to unexpected events and reactions from below. Likewise, the populace was more influential and effective than previously assumed. Albeit on an unequal basis and within certain boundaries, ordinary people engaged in a process of negotiation with party leaders, resulting in clearly visible consequences for both the party's rhetoric and its more general policies. The traditional periodization and depiction of postwar Yugoslav history thus raises a number of questions. After all, if CPY leaders had been blindly dogmatic ideologues, more Stalinist than Stalin himself, up until 1948, their metamorphosis into flexible and innovative reformers by 1950 would seem improbable. The transformation of the passive and impotent populace of the 1940s into dangerous masses that party leaders tried to pacify is equally baffling. It is my contention that while the split was a defining moment in postwar Yugoslav history, its significance and the content of subsequent reforms can be properly understood only in the context of those years preceding the split. Only by combining evidence from the two eras can we devise a portrait of the CPY and Yugoslav society that resolves these dilemmas. By placing equal emphasis on the years before and after the split, this monograph reveals the line of continuity that joined them and that makes the post-1948 reforms intelligible. In the process, it modifies the significance of 1948, which then ceases to represent a kind of "iron curtain" separating two apparently unconnected regimes. For while many of the changes that took place in CPY policies after 1948 were stimulated by external events, the direction and form that those changes took flowed from the party's previous experiences and internal development. The split created both a crisis and an opportunity that allowed and even required policy changes; yet the nature of those changes was rooted in the party's previous successes and failures. Without denying the significance of the Soviet-Yugoslav split, my study allows us to see another criterion of equal importance for the evolution of the Yugoslav Communist regime—the tension between the party's desire for revolutionary social

4

Introduction

and cultural change and its concurrent need for political security and stability. Just as important, my study revises our understanding of the complex and evolving dynamic between the party-state and Yugoslav society in the postwar era. Cold war-era historiography of Communist regimes has tended to perceive them as monolithic behemoths that persistently imposed their policies on helpless and passive subjects. More recent studies, especially those based on newly available archival sources, have begun to modify that perspective, revealing the kinds of pressure from below that various social forces have been able to assert even in clearly dictatorial regimes. My study belongs in that latter category, as it will describe the ways in which the party-state and Yugoslavia's inhabitants responded to and influenced one another. While I do not pretend that the relationship was an equal one, neither was it entirely one-sided. After all, precisely because CPY leaders were committed to their vision for the future, they wished to engage Yugoslavia's citizens in its construction. Yet seeking to ensure their own political security, party leaders also insisted on a degree of social control that served to stifle popular initiative and activism. These simultaneous and contradictory goals competed in party rhetoric and directly influenced the nature of state-society relations. The party's long-term vision for the future, which involved the transformation of society and culture, required that all Yugoslav citizens learn and adopt Marxist-Leninist ideology as a way of understanding the world, a vision for the future, and a program of action. It also required that they become active participants in the construction of socialism. Rhetorical strategies designed to attain that goal were both motivational and pedagogical. They sought to inspire the populace with the party's vision for the future, but also provide them with the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve that vision. The party's concurrent need for stability required quite a different kind of rhetoric—one that stressed absolute adherence to the program established from above and indeed an absence of alternatives to that program. It offered both positive and negative directions, informing the public not only what it must do but what it must not. It was, most often, supported by the open threat of coercion. The tension between the opposing goals in CPY rhetoric reflected the party's graduated strategy for the construction of socialism in Yugoslavia. According to that strategy, party leaders focused first on securing political power, second on achieving economic stability, and only third on transforming society and culture in accordance with Communist values. Although this phased program of action was referred to only rarely in print (and then only after 1948), it clearly dictated what party leaders understood to be their immediate and long-term goals. By referring to that strategy, then, we may better understand why certain policies were implemented, continued, modified, or abolished at particular times.

Introduction

5

Reference to that strategy also helps explain changes in the party's persuasive activities. In the first two phases, as party leaders sought to consolidate power and reconstruct the economy on a socialist basis, the glorious future and the importance of Marxist-Leninist ideology remained secondary to the demands of daily politics in party rhetoric. Even then, party leaders could not afford completely to neglect their long-term vision for the future. After all, it represented their main source of legitimacy. Nonetheless, it was only when the party embarked on the third phase of transforming society and culture that Marxist-Leninist ideology began to play a stronger and more public role in CPY rhetoric. Here again, however, party leaders, while giving more emphasis to their longterm goals, could not afford to risk their immediate position in power. And so the balancing act continued. Yet even while adhering to their strategy, CPY policies and rhetoric were necessarily limited by existing conditions, institutions, and social relations in postwar Yugoslavia as well as by the international constellation of power. Such "internal and external constraints," to use Stephen Lukes's terminology, often forced party leaders to modify their approach and adopt policies contrary to their guiding ideology.6 The most important external force, the Soviet-Yugoslav split, interrupted and delayed the planned transformation of society and culture, while it simultaneously allowed CPY leaders to expand their notions about how to achieve that transformation. Nonetheless, it did not change the basic strategy. Moreover, the direction taken by many reforms in the 1950s was clearly determined by the party's domestic experiences—in particular, its past successes and failures in the field of persuasion. Public response to party rhetoric also influenced its form and content. When urged to take up the party's vision and help make it happen, some Yugoslav citizens were inspired and acted with enthusiasm and vigor. Yet they did not always do so in an orderly or acceptable manner. Very often, when such citizens heeded the call to "show greater initiative," they made "mistakes." Moreover, the party's calls for engagement sometimes resulted in disagreements over strategy and goals or even open dissent. This kind of activism clearly countered the parry's need for political security and stability. Yet when party rhetoric sought to resolve these problems by offering increasingly specific and restrictive instructions about how to participate, it only dampened public interest and enthusiasm; discussion ceased and Yugoslav citizens adopted a strategy of public accommodation and private resistance. That is, they would do precisely as much as they had to and refrain from forbidden activities, but also withdraw from activism into the private sphere and avoid contact with the party-state as much as possible. Obviously, these responses to CPY rhetoric, even while offering greater political stability, sabotaged the party's plans for social and cultural change.

6

Introduction

The party's need to maintain power and its desire to inspire public enthusiasm for communism thus meant that party leaders often had to adjust both their policies and their rhetoric in response to such feedback from below. These modifications, as well as numerous internal reports, offer clues about popular opinion and reveal the existence of active or passive resistance. When a particular approach or policy worked well, party leaders talked about and encouraged further use of it. When, on the contrary, it met with popular resistance, they talked about that too and sometimes either modified or discontinued it. In either case, we learn much about the party, the populace, and the complex relationship between state and society. We can gauge the sensitivity of CPY leaders toward public opinion and clarify the Emits of their flexibility, while simultaneously discerning the level of public support or tolerance for party policies, the methods by which people expressed their opinions, and the degree to which they were able to influence party policy. This analysis relies upon a modified view of state-society relations in Communist, fascist, and other dictatorial revolutionary regimes. For if even within the heavily restrictive cultural and ideological milieu of early postwar Yugoslavia, the population was neither passive nor impotent but able to express its views and influence the party's long- and short-term plans, it seems likely that a similar process of negotiation (however unequal) may also have developed in other systems typically termed "totalitarian." In this sense, my research contributes to the civil society literature on Eastern Europe that recognizes apolitical means of social pressure.7 It differs, however, in that those authors tend to focus on the activities of organized interest groups of the 1970s-~1980s, while Yugoslav citizens of the 1940s-1950s expressed their views in ways that were less coherent and deliberate. It comes closer to supporting James Scott's conclusion that subordinate classes resist the dominant culture in small ways, "in ridicule, in truculence, in irony, in petty acts of noncompliance, in foot dragging, in dissimulation, in resistant mutuality, in the disbelief in elite homilies, in the steady, grinding efforts to hold one's own against overwhelming odds," except that he, like those theorists who describe culture as an ideological battleground, assumes a class basis to these acts of resistance.8 In Yugoslavia, by contrast, those resisting the party's ideological and cultural agenda were not always its "class enemies" but were often among those most favored and coddled by the CPY, including workers, intellectuals, and youth. The material thus describes state-society relations as a complex and often unpredictable dynamic between ruling elites and their constituents. While this study focuses on persuasion, its role within the party's program for change should not be overstated. Coercion was also crucial and it, too, reflected the party's graduated strategy for the construction of so-

Introduction

7

cialism. Party leaders expected to use coercion especially during the first and second phases of their program in order to secure power and restructure the economy according to socialist principles. During those periods in particular, party leaders relied heavily on their monopoly over the state's organs of force. They arrested, imprisoned, or shot open, active, or potentially dangerous opponents of the regime, sometimes in horrifyingly large numbers. Meanwhile, they severely restricted the civil liberties of the rest of the population. Whatever the claims of some CPY rhetoric, there was no real freedom of assembly, speech, or press. The party's use of coercion clearly affected the nature and impact of its persuasive policies as well as the character of state-society relations. Party rhetoric obviously backed up by the threat of force had very different consequences than that which was purely persuasive. The coercive element of the party's program for change thus reminds us of the limits to popular resistance in dictatorial regimes. Yet, the party's changing emphasis on coercion also points to its boundaries. For while party leaders relied on force during the first two phases of their program, they expected to reduce its usage over time. Coercion, they believed, could help realize the party's political and economic policies but it could not effect the long-term cultural transformation of society. In fact, however, it appeared that neither could persuasion. By tracing the evolution of party rhetoric, this book presents also a case study in the goals and achievements of Communist party persuasion and informs us about its value as a means of bringing about change. It offers a particularly enlightening case, moreover, since persuasive methods in Yugoslavia changed so radically and so quickly but with so little apparent success. Further, the question of persuasion's utility is particularly intriguing now that we have witnessed the demise (or transmogrification) of most Communist parties but see also some evidence of their lingering popularity. Finally, an evaluation of propaganda's persuasive effect is clearly germane given its recent and flagrant application by several new nationalist regimes in Yugoslavia's successor states. Among the persuasive means employed by party leaders in the 1940s-1950s were newspaper and journal articles; public speeches; educational curricula and course content; posters; insignia; group activities like parades, workplace competitions, and volunteer labor brigades; and the works, monuments, and production of both high and popular culture. While the importance of the public media and education as methods of indoctrination is well known, the persuasive value of cultural monuments and rituals has stimulated much debate among both those who would use it and those who study it. A belief in culture's educational and persuasive potential has been adopted by a wide variety of religious, political, and commercial organizations since the beginning of

8

Introduction

time. The Catholic Church sought to maintain its monopoly on most culture in order to direct people's attention toward God; Jacobin idealists strove to alter French citizens' fundamental values and associations by creating a new revolutionary calendar; and American advertisers have used the power of popular music to promote their products. Yet the effect of such efforts remains uncertain. Can cultural manipulation change people's minds? And if so, how and to what extent? Most recently, this question has been addressed in the form of an ongoing debate among 20th-century U.S. historians about the nature of the relationship between the producers and consumers of mass or popular culture. Is the Hollywood entertainment industry imposing its own warped values and cheap aesthetic tastes on the public, or is it only responding to preexisting popular tastes and demands? Further, to what extent are the consumers of culture able to make it their own, adapting it to their interests and imbuing it with their values, regardless of its producer's original intent?9 The debate is clearly relevant to a discussion of state-society relations in Yugoslavia, where, as in all Communist-dominated countries, the state held a monopoly over the production and distribution of culture and manipulated it with the clear intent of directing and changing the values and aesthetic tastes of its citizenry. My investigation into the successes and (more often) failures of the parry's manipulation of culture and other more direct persuasive methods supports the hypothesis of several previous scholars that such suasive efforts are effective only or mainly when they seek to build upon already existing values and beliefs and are much less so when they try to change people's values or create new ones for them.10 In other words, party rhetoric could confirm and sometimes manipulate the existing culture, but was generally unable to transform it.11 For example, Yugoslavia's citizens proved remarkably adept at finding ways of appearing to comply with the demands of the party while simultaneously satisfying their own personal needs and interests. Yugoslavia's youth might indeed join volunteer labor brigades in the desired numbers but did not always use that opportunity so much for their moral and ideological development as for avoiding parental discipline. Similarly, musicians might conform to the party's insistence that they compose songs about the heroic wartime efforts of the Partisans or the contributions of workers to the construction of socialism, but would then set the politically correct lyrics to "decadent" jazz music. In other words, even as the Communist rulers of Yugoslavia sought to manipulate the extant culture, Yugoslavia's citizens manipulated with equal or greater success that culture imposed upon them from above. Ultimately, the party's apparent inability to transform society and culture altered not only the form and content of its persuasive rhetoric, but

9

Introduction

eventually its entire approach to the construction of socialism. Thus, the party's relaxation of cultural controls beginning in 1950 was motivated not so much by the consequences of the Soviet-Yugoslav split as by negative responses to its previous policies and the rhetorical strategies designed to justify them. The reforms of the early 1950s were intended to reactivate Yugoslavia's citizens and engage them in the cultural transformation. Again, however, the party's response to feedback from below could go either way. While such feedback inspired certain reforms, it ended others. By mid-1953, top CPY leaders began to back away from many recently adopted political reforms, not so much due to external events like the death of Stalin but because domestic reactions to the new persuasive approach had convinced them that those reforms could endanger the party's hold on power. Those reactions also gradually convinced party leaders that they would never effect the transformation of society by means of persuasion. As a result, the party's political security came to acquire a position of absolute priority, while its long-term vision was consigned to an increasingly distant future. Note About Sources The activities and strategies described in this monograph were called by the Communists agitation and propaganda or agitprop.12 These terms did not carry the pejorative connotation among Communists that they do among Western observers but were seen to be a legitimate and natural part of politics. Indeed, persuasion and rhetoric are inherent in political activity. When applied by Communist regimes, however, the activity takes on a more suspicious nature and is often considered to be simply lying or a means of distracting public attention from despotic government. Certainly, rhetoric can be and often is used for such purposes (both by Communist and non-Communist parties). Nonetheless, my comparison of official published rhetoric with internal party documents and meetings revealed that in most cases CPY propaganda accurately reflected the party's short-term and/or long-term goals and intentions. Although party rhetoric did offer some outright lies, they tended to fall into certain categories (statistics on production or broad generalizations about popular support for the party or its policies) and were easily recognized. Otherwise, because it represented the party's most direct means of communicating with not only the broader public but also its own membership, CPY rhetoric had to and did describe party goals with reasonable accuracy. Indeed, through such rhetoric one may clearly discern the party's entire political, economic, and cultural program. Its changing form and content mirrored changes in CPY goals and priorities. Moreover, my re-

10

Introduction

search shows that the party's persuasive policies not only accurately reflected its goals, but in some cases even determined them. That is, public response to some rhetorical strategies convinced CPY leaders to make fundamental changes in their overall approach and general policies. In such cases, rhetoric did not just mirror or justify party policies/ but actually inspired and influenced them. An examination of such rhetoric thus clearly contributes to a fuller and more sophisticated understanding of the regime. Information for this study was drawn largely from the archival funds in Belgrade and Zagreb of various party, state, and mass organizations as well as from numerous public forms of persuasion, such as periodical and nonperiodical publications, film, radio, speeches, educational programs and curricula, official celebrations, and high and popular culture—including literature, art, sculpture, music, theater, and dance. I also made use of a growing supply of memoir literature and I conducted interviews with a select number of participants in the party's persuasive activities. In terms of secondary sources, I relied not only on other historians, but also on experts in the fields of political science, anthropology, literature, the arts, and education. At archives in Zagreb and Belgrade, the more important funds were those of the politburo and the departments of agitation and propaganda from the central committees of the CPY and Communist Party of Croatia; archives of the People's Front and of women's, youth, and trade union organizations; and archives of the ministry of education and Committee for Schools and Science. Access to these archives was available in Yugoslavia already by the late 1980s. Among the more important newspapers consulted were Borbu (the official organ of the CPY}, PoHtika (an ostensibly independent but clearly Communist-dominated newspaper), 20. oktobar (the organ of the People's Front of Belgrade), Rod (the organ of the united trade unions' organization), and Republika (the organ of the non-Communist but cooperative Republican party). Particularly relevant journals included Komunist (the party's theoretical journal), Na.$a knjizevnost, NfN, and Republihi (Serband Croat-based literary journals), Mladost (a youth literary journal), and Sawemena Skola (journal of the Union of Educational Workers). Most of the internal documents and many of the public ones examined were of an ail-Yugoslav nature and presented the conclusions of central organs, usually based on numerous reports received from throughout the country. Except as otherwise stated, these conclusions and the policies based on them were meant to be applied in the same way in all regions of the country. This does not mean, of course, that all policies were applied uniformly throughout the country. On the contrary, it is one of the basic conclusions of this work that policy implementation varied widely de-

11

Introduction

pending on a number of factors, including the age, educational level, class, gender, religious background, and national identity of those involved. Any attempt to provide a comprehensive social history of the era would have to address these differences in a systematic manner. Notes 1. Culture in this work refers both to works and monuments of artistic creation and to what Geertz calls "mass culture," defined as "the half-formed, taken-forgranted, indifferently systematized notions that guide the activities of normal men in everyday life." Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1973), 14,362. 2. Given Yugoslavia's complex national makeup, it would undoubtedly be more accurate to speak of efforts to realize the transformation of cultures, not culture. The Communists, however, made no such distinction and for the sake of simplicity, unless the distinction is absolutely necessary, neither will I. 3. For this paper, I use the term citizens to mean only "members of a state." While some may reasonably dispute its implication of sovereignty, it is, even so, a less problematic term than the most obvious alternative, Yugoslavs, 4. Phyllis Auty, Yugoslavia (New York: Walker and Company, 1965); George W. Hoffman and Fred Warner Neal, Yugoslavia and the New Communism (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1962); Dennison Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment, 1948-1974 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977). Yugoslav historians have generally followed a similar approach. While less critical of CPY leaders before the split, they nonetheless blame all flaws in the early years of party rule on its adherence to the Soviet model. Vladimir Dedijer, Tito (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953); Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962); Pero Mora£a and Stanislav Stojanovic, eds., Povijest Saveza kamunista fugoslavijee (Belgrade: Izdavacki centar Komunist, 1985). 5. Certain aspects of the period have been addressed in larger histories, memoirs, and isolated monographs, but most often only in a brief and clearly introductory manner. See Dusan Bilandzic, Historijan SodjalistiCkee Federativne Eepublike Jugoslavije: Glavni procesi, 1918-1985 (Zagreb: Skolska knjiga, 1985); Branko Petranovic, Politifltee i pmvne prilike za vrerne priwemene vlade DFJ (Belgrade: 1964); Branko Petranovifi, Istorija Jugoslavije 1918-1978 (Belgrade: 1980); Morafia and Stojanovic; Vladimir Dedijer, Novi prilozi za biografiju Josipa Broza Tita, Vol. 3 (Belgrade: Rad, 1984); Djilas, Conversations with Stalin; Milovan Djilas, Rise and Fall (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983); Vladimir Dedijer, The Battle Stalin Lost, Memoirs of Yugoslavia, 1948-1953 (New York: Viking Press, 1970); A. Ross Johnson, The Transformation of Communist Ideology, The Yugoslav Case, 1945-1953 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1972); Ivo Banac, With Stalin Against Tito, Caminformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Adam B. Ulam, Titoism and the Cominformm(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952). Only recently, stimulated by a new availability of archival materials, has more detailed study of the 1944-1948 period been initiated by a number of young Yugoslav scholars as well as by a few Americans. See Melissa

12

Introduction

Bokovoy, Peasants and Communists: Politics and Ideology in the Yugoslav Countryside, 1941-1953 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998); Katherine M. McCarthy, "Peasant Revolutionaries and Partisan Power: Rural Resistance to Communist Agrarian Policies in Croatia, 1941-1953," Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1995; Vojislav KoStunica and Kosta tavoski, Party Pluralism or Monism, Social Movements and the Political System in Yugoslavia., 1944-1949 (Boulder, CO; Westview Press, 1985); Ljubodrag Dimic, Agitprop kultura, Agitpropomka faza kulturne politike u Srbiji, 1945-1952 (Belgrade: Rad, 1988); Rajko Danilovic, Upotreba neprijatelja: Politicka sudjenja 1945-1991 u jugoshviji (Valjevo: Valjevac, 1993); Sonja Bokun-Djinic, Na sudiliStu agitpropa: Etatizatn i knjiievno nasledje, 1944-1952 (Belgrade: Filip Visnjic, 1997); Radmila Radio, Verom pretty vere: Drlava i verske zajednice u Srbiji, 1945-1953 (Belgrade: IMS, 1995); Marko Lopusina, Crna knjiga: Cenzura u Jugoslainji, 1945-91 (Belgrade: Fokus, 1991); Momfilo Pavlovic, Srpsko selo 1945-1952: Otkup (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 1997). 6. Stephen Lukes, Essays in Social Theory (London: MacMillan Inc., 1977), 3-13. 7. See, for example, Vaclav Havel et al, The Power of the Powerless (Boston, MA: Faber and Faber, 1987) and Vladimir Tisrnaneanu, Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (New York: Free Press, 1992). 8. James C. Scott, "Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 350. See also Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings (New York: International Publishers, 1957); Stuart Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'," in People's History and Socialist Theory, ed, Raphael Samuel (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 227-240. 9. For a clear and unapologetic expression of both views see the introductory chapters by Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White in their edited volume, Miss Culture Revisited (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1971), 3-21. For a more recent discussion of the issue, see the articles by Lawrence W. Levine, Robin D.G. Kelley, Natalie Zemon Davis, and T. J. Jackson Lears in American Historical Review, 97 (December 1992): 1369-1430. 10. See, for example, Jacques Ellul, Propaganda, the Formation of Men's Attitudes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 295; Oliver Thomson, Mass Persuasion in History, An Historical Analysis of the Development of Propaganda Techniques (Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing, 1977); Ian Kershaw, "How Effective Was Nazi Propaganda?" in Nazi Propaganda, the Power and the Limitations, ed. David Welch (UK: Croom Helm Ltd., 1983), 180-205. 11. This conclusion may be seen as either encouraging or discouraging in the current post-Communist context. An optimist might conclude that the obviously absurd rhetorical claims recently set forth by various nationalist groups in Yugoslavia's successor states are clearly doomed to failure. A pessimist, on the other hand, might worry more about what the apparent successes of such nationalist propaganda seem to suggest about the preexisting values and beliefs of the local population. 12. The separate functions of agitation and propaganda as terms relating to methods of Communist indoctrination were first elaborated by G. V. Plekhanov, who stated that "the propagandist presents many ideas to one individual, or to several individuals. The agitator presents one idea only, or a few ideas, but he presents them to a whole mass of persons." Lenin later explained that propa-

Introduction

13

ganda was primarily ideological—explaining the bases of class society and the inevitability of class struggle—while agitation was to be both economic and political. But if Plekhanov and Lenin differentiated between the two techniques, CPY leaders (at least up until 1950) did not and generally referred to their persuasive activities using the lump term agitprop. C. V. Plekhanov cited in Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 2d ed. (New York: Random. House, 1971), 23; V. I. Lenin, "Zadachi russkikh sotsial-demokratov," in Polnoe sobmnie sochinenii 2:6-7 (Moscow: 1958-1965),

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Part One

While this monograph offers a primarily chronological argument, it does not provide a full account of all events and policies in the years between 1944 and 1953. Therefore and in order to help readers place the changing themes and forms of party persuasive policies in context, Chapter 1 provides a brief summary of events leading up to the establishment of Communist rule and sketches the main political and economic developments in Yugoslavia from 1944 to 1954. Some of these later developments will be described in considerably more detail in subsequent chapters. This chapter also describes the domestic and international context within which the CPY's efforts to remake society took place. Chapter 2 specifies the individuals, institutions, and organizations involved in party persuasive activities—including the Communist party, the state, and the mass organizations—and describes the methods by which they sought to realize the party's short-term and long-term agenda. Essentially, then, this chapter displays the nuts and bolts of party persuasion, explaining who carried it out and by what means. Finally, Chapter 3 describes several common problems that CPY leaders faced in their efforts to transform society and culture by persuasive means, including an occasional lack of unity in decision making at the top and a far more pervasive lack of consistency in policy application below.

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1 Setting the Stage

Historical Review The liberation of Belgrade from German occupation by the combined efforts of Tito's Partisans and the Soviet Red Army on October 20, 1944, represented the symbolic beginning of Communist rule over the second "new" Yugoslavia. Although there had been and would be dates of more legal importance, control over the country's political center not only suggested the solidity of the Communist organization, but provided it with the secure basis and administrative apparatus necessary for governance,1 The first "old" Yugoslavia, which had perished in the Second World War, had been formed on December 1, 1918, as an alliance of several South Slavic and other nations. Originally entitled "The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes," the new state really combined members of over a dozen ethnic groups, each with its own culture, history, and in some cases, language and religion. While the unification of these groups made a certain amount of sense given the geographic, demographic, and political makeup of the region, it was nonetheless at odds with the exclusivist atmosphere typical of many 19th-century nationalist ideologies. Moreover, the newly formed entity rested on shaky foundations since each of the predominant member nations joining it held different concepts of state organization. While the Croats hoped the Yugoslav state would be a loose federation of equal and autonomous nations, the Serbs envisioned and successfully established it as a highly centralized, unitaristic entity dominated by Serbian governing institutions. As a result, many citizens of the new state never accepted its legitimacy and even fewer came to see themselves as members of a new "Yugoslav" nation. The resultant clashes between these conflicting notions of the new state, combined with the concurrent growth of national intolerance and the monarchical government's increasingly oppressive and autocratic style, made for a turbulent interwar experience.2 Eventually, faced by the growing threat from Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, the prewar govern17

18

Setting the Stage

merit recognized the dangers of its internal dissension and made some concessions aimed at reconciliation and unification. But these measures were both too little and too late and with the onset of the Second World War the festering national tensions exploded into violence. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia, first formed in 1919, had remained, throughout the history of interwar Yugoslavia, a relatively small and inconsequential force. Outlawed by the government after 1921 and torn by internal dissension (mostly over the national question), the party came close to being dissolved by the Soviet-dominated Communist International, or Comintern, in 1937. CPY fortunes began to improve only in the next few years thanks both to its adoption of the Comintern's new "popular front" line, which helped end the party's previous self-imposed isolation, and to the naming of Josip Broz Tito as general secretary of the party. Tito's purges and "bolshevization" of the party made it a firmer, more disciplined, and more monolithic body than ever before, yet the CPY remained relatively small and weak, counting on the eve of the Second World War only 12,000 members.3 In the course of the war, however, the balance of forces in Yugoslavia altered radically and the CPY found itself in an advantaged position to lead a Partisan movement for liberation from foreign occupiers. The party's vast interwar experience in illegal activity, together with its consolidation and bolshevization under Tito, made the CPY uniquely well suited to develop an underground opposition to the foreign occupiers. Even more important, the CPY was the only prewar party in Yugoslavia not associated with any one national group. In the bloody fratricidal conflict that developed concurrently with foreign occupation, the CPY's apparent ability to stand above nationalism and call for the "brotherhood and unity" of all Yugoslav nations and nationalities was enormously effective. Moreover, during the war, the party's popular front policy finally began to bear fruit. Although CPY efforts to cooperate with other opposition parties in prewar Yugoslavia had met with little success, under conditions of foreign occupation and civil war, the party's call for unity in the struggle against fascism regardless of political, national, or religious affiliation gained new impetus. Consequently, and particularly as the party's military successes grew, increasing numbers of ordinary citizens, including many with no ties to or interest in communism, joined the Partisan forces. This union of peasants, workers, and others—led by the CPY, but fighting for the common goals of liberation from foreign occupation, national equality, and a better future—formed the basis of the United People's Liberation Front, later renamed the People's Front of Yugoslavia (PFY). By 1947, the PFY had grown into a mass organization of 7 million members and was the CPY's strongest pillar of support.

Setting the Stage

19

As the war progressed, the Communist party gradually but insistently created and affirmed its own governing organizations at all levels of society. At the lowest level, the CPY first established local governing bodies, known as People's Councils (PCs), in all liberated regions to stimulate and coordinate the gathering of supplies for the Partisan army. Originally considered temporary, in September 1942 the Central Committee of the CPY declared the PCs permanent and "the germ from which the future government will develop."4 By the end of the war, an entire system of PCs, beginning at the bottom with local or village councils and progressing upward through townships, cities, districts, and regions, not only secured supplies for the army, but also acted as fully functioning organs of government. CPY construction of its higher organs of power began on November 26-27,1942, with the first meeting of the Anti-fascist People's Liberation Council of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ—Anti-faSistifiko vijece narodnog oslobodjenja Jugoslavije). Acting on Soviet advice, AVNOJ did not immediately establish itself as an organ of power in opposition to the prewar Yugoslav government, now in exile in London, but only as a general political, national, and anti-fascist body. One year later, however, at its second meeting on November 29-30, 1943, and in defiance of Soviet instructions, AVNOJ officially declared itself the highest legislative, executive, and judicial organ of power in Yugoslavia, The party's next goal was to obtain international recognition of its new government. In the early part of the war, the Western allies had offered their support exclusively to the royalist Yugoslav government-in-exile and to the Cetniks, a Serbian organization loyal to King Petar and led by Colonel Draia Mihailovi£. Although originally a resistance movement, Mihailovi^'s Cetniks ended by collaborating with the Germans, and in 1943 the British transferred their support to the Partisans as it had become clear that they were more effective at fighting Germans. The CPY and the British government held prolonged negotiations throughout 1944, eventually agreeing to a compromise government based on AVNOJ, but including also representatives from the government-in-exile and the prewar Yugoslav Parliament. The June 1944 ''Tito-Subasic' Agreement" also obliged the CPY to permit free activity of other political parties and to hold free elections for a constitutional assembly. The Red Army's approach through Romania in the fall of 1944 offered the CPY an opportunity to enlist Soviet aid for the liberation of Belgrade. In late September, Tito secretly flew to Moscow to negotiate the joint action and one month later a combined force of Soviet and Partisan soldiers drove the Germans from Belgrade. On October 20, 1944, Tito's Supreme Staff took control over Yugoslavia's capital city. Although the war in Yugoslavia continued to rage for almost seven more months until the final

20

Setting the Stage

expulsion of German troops from Croatia and Slovenia in May 1945, the liberation of Belgrade greatly enhanced the CPY's position as the leading force in Yugoslavia. The party, nonetheless, restated its commitment to the compromise reached with Britain, and the new government of "Democratic Federated Yugoslavia," created March 7, 1945, included three members of the Yugoslav government-in-exile. Likewise, AVNOJ—now designated the new government's provisional assembly—accepted into its ranks 118 "non-compromised" prewar politicians and people's deputies. Officially, the new government's main function was to maintain order while presiding over the promised free elections to a constitutional assembly. Held on November 11, 1945, the elections themselves were, according to most observers, relatively free and clean. The preelection campaign, however, certainly was not. The CPY had designed the electoral law to benefit its own candidates, exerted tight control over the media, carried out systematic terror against opposition elements, and issued barely veiled threats against any "neutral" or "apolitical" citizens. Under these conditions, the opposition chose to boycott the elections, turning them into a one-horse race. Yet despite the farcical nature of the election, the party's intense political activity paid off when the elections achieved both high voter turnout and a 90 percent victory for the Communistbacked candidates.5 On November 29, 1945—on the second anniversary of the Second Meeting of AVNOJ—the newly elected Constitutional Assembly declared King Petar formally deposed and Yugoslavia a "Federal People's Republic." Two months later, on January 31, 1946, it formally adopted a new constitution, modeled on that of the Soviet Union, The Constitutional Assembly then refashioned itself as new Yugoslavia's first parliament. Once it had secured victory through elections, the new regime relaxed its concern for the Western allies* democratic sensitivities and became far less restrained in its treatment of opposition elements. By the spring of 1946, tetnik leader Draia Mihailovic, had been captured, tried, and executed, and in the fall of that year the party also arrested and imprisoned the Croatian Catholic archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac, ostensibly for collaborating with the Croat fascist organization known as the UstaSa. The following summer saw the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of prewar Serb politician Dragoljub Jovanovic", who, although a member of the People's Front, had proved to be unacceptably stubborn in his refusal to accept all party policies without question. In the meantime, the party had launched a series of legislative and economic policies designed to bring about the socialist transformation of society. Already in August 1945, the Provisional Assembly had passed a

Setting the Stage

21

law on agrarian reform and colonization that ultimately resulted in the redistribution of some 800,000 hectares of land among 316,000 peasant families.6 In December 1946, Parliament passed its first law on nationalization, covering such enterprises of "national importance" as banking, transportation, and wholesale commerce, although, in fact, 80 percent of Yugoslav industry had already been confiscated either directly from wartime occupiers or from their Yugoslav owners on often dubious grounds of collaboration. A second nationalization law passed in April 1948 finally completed the process, realizing state control over even minute enterprises. Meanwhile, in April 1947, the government had unveiled its first Five Year Plan for economic development, which, again following the Soviet example, called for extremely high levels of investment, especially in the infrastructure and in heavy industry. In the spring and summer of 1948, CPY progress toward socialist development was suddenly interrupted by its developing conflict with the Soviet Union and "People's Democracies" of Eastern Europe, After a tense meeting between top CPY leaders and Stalin in February 1948, Tito's pictures were suddenly removed from all public places in Romania. Then on March 18, the Soviet Union abruptly recalled its high level military and diplomatic personnel from Yugoslavia, claiming that they were "surrounded by an absence of comradeship."7 In the weeks and months that followed, Soviet leaders carried on a heated correspondence with the Central Committee of the CPY. In their letters, Stalin and Molotov accused Yugoslav leaders of a variety of sins, from anti-Soviet attitudes to coddling the peasantry. Some of the accusations were clearly ludicrous while others bore more relationship to reality. Top CPY leaders, however, correctly surmised that the conflict had nothing to do with these specific accusations but was intended to destroy the independence of the party, making it into a more obedient and predictable satellite. In their responses, therefore, CPY leaders refused to admit error, while nonetheless insisting on their loyalty to the Soviet Union and the cause of socialism. They declined, moreover, to discuss their case at a special meeting of the Communist Information Bureau or Cominform (an organization in which Yugoslavia's Communists had previously held a position of leadership) convened in Bucharest, Romania, on June 28, 1948. The resolution passed at that meeting restated the Soviet accusations and called on "healthy elements" in the party to remove their leaders and return Yugoslavia to the socialist fold. In response, CPY leaders first published the resolution and their entire correspondence with Soviet leaders and then instituted a campaign to root out Cominform supporters, while at the same time still declaring loyalty to the Soviet Union and socialist bloc.

22

Setting the Stage

The split, formalized by the Cominform resolution of June 28, 1948, thus did not end Yugoslavia's efforts at socialization. It did, however, change them, though not all at once and not always in the expected manner. The immediate impact of the split was a tightening up of party controls on Yugoslav society, seen most clearly in the arrest and imprisonment of some 14,000 Communists as Cominformist agents. In addition, the considerable economic hardships imposed by the Cominform blockade of Yugoslavia, together with the country's heightened defense needs, led the party to accelerate its plan for socialization of the countryside through the often forcible creation of Peasant Working Cooperatives. Yet, it was also during this period that party leaders began to express increasingly sharp criticisms of the Soviet Union and its party leadership. Beginning in the spring of 1949, that leadership was consistently described as imperialistic, chauvinistic, and bureaucratic, while its policies were now said to deviate substantially from the theories of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. It was also in mid-1949 that party leaders began rereading the classics of Marx and Engels in order to provide ideological justification for their acts of independence. As they did so, they developed a new approach to the political and economic construction of socialism, as well as a more sophisticated and thoughtful understanding of social and cultural change. Consequently, while the immediate post-split era did show increased levels of repression and higher demands for the mobilization of labor, it also served as an incubator for new ideas about how to achieve the transformation of society, One of the embryos nurtured in that incubator would emerge by June 1950 as the Law on Worker's Self-Management or, according to its official title, "The Basic Law on the Management of State Economic Enterprises and Higher Economic Associations by the Work Collectives." Introduced and defended by Tito and passed by the National Assembly on June 27, 1950, the new law was intended to begin the process of the "withering away of the state" and bring Yugoslav socialism closer to the model envisioned by Marx and Engels. The law officially ended state ownership of the means of production, turning it over to "society" in the care of elected workers' councils and management boards. In practice, however, the enterprise director, though officially a nonvoting member of the management board, maintained considerable authority. Most important, as an agent of the state, he was responsible for ensuring the enterprise's compliance with central economic planning. Yet even if the Law on Self-Management did not lead to true workers' management of the economy, it provided the ideological basis for more influential changes in the structure and modus operandi of party organizations—especially at the district and local levels. Accordingly, the re-

Setting the Stage

23

form of party organizations passed on June 20,1950, sought to establish a clearer boundary between party and state apparati. In the past, it explained, district party and government positions had been almost inseparable and the party had exercised its leading role in society through direct control over the most important branches of the state. While claiming that this approach had been both necessary and correct in the first years of socialist construction, the Central Committee admitted that it had now become a barrier to socialist democracy as it had prevented the development of independence by government organizations and stifled the initiative of the masses.8 The reform also reduced the size of the administrative apparati in all party organizations, hoping to minimize bureaucratization. As a result, whereas in 1950 there had been 11,930 professional party functionaries, by November 1952 that number had been reduced to 4,599.9 Meanwhile, party leaders strengthened efforts to stimulate ideological debate at the Fourth Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPY held in June 1951. The plenum's "Resolution on theoretical work in the CPY" now stated that the opinions of top party leaders need not be obligatorily studied or adopted by lower party forums unless so ordered by a Politburo directive. The Fourth Plenum also urged substantial progress in the development of a more independent and professional legal system after a stunning report by Aleksandar Rankovi£ admitted to numerous violations of legality in the previous years by the party, the courts, and especially the secret police, otherwise known as UDBa.10 Various speeches by top party leaders in the early 1950s also now referred to the future "withering away" of both the state and the party. All agreed that such an occurrence would not mean their elimination but only a withering away of their functions. Nonetheless, the very existence of such discussions reflected a revised interpretation of the party's guiding ideology. The high point of the party's reform policies came at the Sixth Party Congress held November 2-7, 1952, and at the Fourth Congress of the People's Front in late February 1953. The Sixth Party Congress represented a culmination and official endorsement of the trends and reforms carried out in the previous two years. First, it offered a severe criticism of the Stalinist system, unequivocally describing it as an aggressive imperialist force, state-capitalist, and bureaucratic. More importantly, however, party leaders now moved beyond criticizing Stalinist revisionism to articulate openly and officially their own interpretation of Marxist theory for the Yugoslav case based on workers' self-management, the separation of party and state, and the guiding (but not ruling) role of the Communist party. To make tangible this new approach, the Central Committee changed the party's name from the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY). The party, its leaders

24

Setting the Stage

now declared, would unquestionably maintain its leading role in society, but would realize it by different, less Stalinist, means.11 The Fourth Congress of the People's Front (now renamed the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Yugoslavia—SAWPY) held in February 1953 marked a further step forward in expanding the party's view of its role. All agreed that SAWPY now represented the main political organization in the country. The LCY, meanwhile, would represent only its "most ideologically consistent section" and would seek to realize its goals through that organization. The congress also prepared the ground for the official abandonment of the collective farms, describing Stalin's collectivization drive as the "cruel exploitation of the masses" and the "barbaric theft of the peasantry," According to the "Decree on Property Relations and Reorganization of Peasant Working Cooperatives," on March 30, 1953, peasants could choose freely to leave the cooperative, taking with them whatever equipment and land they had brought into it. Predictably, most did. In some areas, twothirds of the peasants in Peasant Working Cooperatives left them within the first nine months. By 1957, the amount of arable land in the socialist sector had declined from 25 percent in 1952 to only 9 percent.12 Although collective farms were never reestablished in Yugoslavia, the party almost immediately thereafter embarked on an era of retrenchment toward tighter party control. The crucial turning point away from reform came at the Second Plenum of the Central Committee held on Tito's island retreat of Brioni in June 1953. The plenum's purpose was to evaluate and reinterpret the conclusions of the Sixth Party Congress. In marked contrast to plenums and congresses earlier in the 1950s, which worried about excessive bureaucratization, the use of administrative methods, and the danger of developing state capitalism, the directive letter that followed the Brioni Plenum expressed concern over the growing and dangerous influence of the bourgeois West. The Brioni Plenum of 1953 thus marked the end of the reform period of the 1950s. Indeed, less than a year later at another Brioni Plenum in January 1954, Milovan Djilas, the foremost proponent of the reforms, would be first expelled from the party and later arrested. The party, it was now made clear, would not "wither away," nor would it turn over its leading role in the country to any other organization. Nonetheless, throughout the following decades, Yugoslavia would become known for the greater degree of freedom and economic prosperity it offered. In stark contrast to those in the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, Yugoslavia's citizens enjoyed the right to travel abroad and had considerable access to Western material and cultural imports. Thanks to Western loans, Yugoslav citizens also enjoyed a much higher standard of living than did their counterparts in the Warsaw Pact. Yet,

25

Setting the Stage

the country also retained its socialist system and while other periods of reform came and went, none was as innovative or idealistic as that of the early 1950s, and none ever caused any further wavering in the party's determination to maintain its monopoly on power.

External and Internal Constraints The events outlined above developed as the result of a complex mixture of forces, including ideology, international events, and Yugoslavia's domestic circumstances. This monograph focuses mainly on the ideological element, that is, on CPY efforts to realize its vision for the future. Those efforts, however, were necessarily conditioned by the party's position within the matrix of domestic and international power relations, as well as by Yugoslavia's postwar economic and social circumstances. While not the sole determinants of CPY policy, these relations and circumstances defined the boundaries within which the party sought to realize its ideological agenda. Party policies could not help but be affected by the emerging cold war atmosphere, the Soviet-Yugoslav split, Yugoslavia's changing but nearly always desperate economic situation, the high level of national tension in the country, and a generally unstable political and social environment. Within the emerging postwar division of power between the Soviet Union and the West, and despite a wartime agreement between Stalin and Churchill evenly splitting future political influence in Yugoslavia, the CPY's rise to power firmly affixed Yugoslavia to the Soviet camp. New Yugoslavia's loyalty to the Soviet Union derived mainly from the CPY's Communist ideology and its adherence to the general line of the Communist movement. Up until the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union had been the only major country in the world ruled by Communists, providing it an essentially unchallenged position of authority among other aspiring Communist parties. Soviet predominance in the Comintern, first formalized at its Second Congress by the mandatory adoption of Lenin's "21 Conditions," grew even further under Stalin, when defense of the Soviet Union became the first duty and requirement of all Comintern members. The CPY had joined the Comintern already in 1919 and its adherence to the Comintern line was never seriously questioned. Indeed, Soviet leaders commonly and directly interfered in the CPY's internal organization and policy determination throughout the interwar period. Even during the war, after Soviet leaders had dissolved the Comintern, they continued to send regular advice and directives to the CPY through communiques, couriers, and radio transmissions. After the war ended,

26

Setting the Stage

the CPY remained closely attuned to the Soviet Union in the determination and execution of its domestic and foreign policies, It is also true, however, that almost from the very outset of the war, the CPY showed considerably more independence in its relations with the Soviet Union than did any of the other Communist parties in Eastern Europe, Even in the early stages of the war, CPY leaders took a number of decisions separate from or in opposition to the Soviet line, and as the party's position of authority in Yugoslavia increased, so too did its independence. The CPY certainly did not consciously set itself up in opposition to the Soviet Union. On the contrary, Yugoslav party leaders clearly considered themselves to be Stalin's most loyal and devoted disciples. Up until the Soviet-Yugoslav split and even for six months after it, CPY leaders regularly hailed the Soviet Union as the first country of socialism and publicly recognized its position of authority. Treatment of the Soviet Union by the Yugoslav media was voluminous and unfailingly complimentary, glorifying it as the most just, democratic, freedom-loving, and progressive nation in the world. Nonetheless, in the years from 1944 to 1948, several disputes arose between the two governments concerning their mutual economic relations, the behavior of Soviet military personnel in Yugoslavia, and especially the CPY's radical foreign policies. Although CPY loyalty to the Soviet Union remained unshaken until after the 1948 split, its earlier adherence to the Soviet line could be considered neither unquestioning nor unconditional13 Meanwhile, CPY relations with the West grew increasingly tense after the end of the war. In part, Yugoslavia's relations with the West reflected only the changing international scene in which the United States and the Soviet Union, with their vastly differing political ideologies, emerged as the predominant world powers. Already by late 1944 and early 1945, the entire wartime alliance system was disintegrating in disputes over the construction of peace and the postwar organization of Europe. Despite what is now seen as Stalin's relatively conservative foreign policy, the Western allies' fear of proliferating Communist-dominated governments resulted by early 1946 in Churchill's declaration of a "crusade against communism" and by 1947 in Truman's promise to help Greece and Turkey ward off the Communist threat. The CPY, in particular, regularly provoked Western hostility through its radical domestic polices, its intransigent stance with regard to Trieste, and its continued aid to Communist insurgents in Greece. Although Stalin often opposed these CPY policies, Western allies clearly believed they had originated in Moscow. Thus the Western allies tended to treat Yugoslavia as a fully obedient satellite of the Soviet Union and a testing ground in the battle between Soviet and Western ideologies.

Setting the Stage

27

As a result of both the CPY's inflexible policies and Western misconceptions about their significance, ill feelings between Yugoslavia's Communist regime and the West began to surface already in 1943 and increased steadily in the years following the war. Consequently, Yugoslavia's postwar relations with the West were characterized by an extreme degree of uncertainty, and Yugoslav leaders apparently considered a new war possible in the near future. In a Politburo meeting in December 1945, for example, Tito warned that given the extremely tense situation in Trieste, the party must be militarily prepared for anything, and internal reports throughout the early postwar era worried that the press too often published material that might be useful to an unnamed enemy in case of war.14 Even so, it would be inaccurate to suggest that the West had no influence on CPY policies before 1948. For even if party leaders steadfastly rejected Western political, economic, and cultural models, the same could not be said of Yugoslavia's citizens. While CPY opponents who promoted Western political and economic solutions might be dealt with relatively easily, party leaders had a much harder time countering the influence of Western high and popular culture on Yugoslavia's intellectuals and ordinary citizens,15 In the years following the Soviet-Yugoslav split, Yugoslavia's position in this international dichotomy necessarily changed. Expelled from the Soviet bloc and the target of an almost complete economic blockade by the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, Yugoslavia's leaders were forced to reorient their foreign policies toward the West. While retaining a socialist system and claiming continued loyalty to the socialist cause, party leaders nonetheless reduced the level of their anti-Western rhetoric and ended their support of Greek insurgents. Simultaneously, they began cautious conversations with Western diplomats in search of economic aid. By September 1949, they had secured their first U.S. loan of $20 million. In the following years, party leaders would accept large amounts of additional Western economic and even military aid. While always claiming that this aid came "with no strings attached," the increased contact with the West unquestionably influenced the political and cultural realm, while the loans themselves offered new opportunities in the economic sphere.16 While clearly conditioned by the conflict between East and West in the international sphere, CPY policies were more directly affected by Yugoslavia's domestic needs and circumstances. Yugoslavia's impoverished economic status, in particular, placed almost overwhelming demands on the new regime in the years immediately following the war. Largely agrarian and seriously underdeveloped, Yugoslavia's prewar per capita

28

Setting the Stage

income had been only between 60 and 70 U.S. dollars, compared with $521 in the United States and $236 in France.17 This state of poverty was further exacerbated by the war, in which a total of 1.7 million people died and another 3.5 million were left homeless. The country's infrastructure suffered enormous devastation as over 50 percent of rail lines were destroyed, along with 35 percent of prewar industry, 50-70 percent of prewar livestock, and 80 percent of ploughs and harvesting equipment. Many villages had been entirely destroyed and difficult living conditions prevailed even in the major cities. Worse yet, two years of drought immediately following the war and another in 1950 raised the threat of mass starvation.18 The new government's first and most pressing responsibility, then, was to prevent a famine and begin rebuilding the country by reestablishing lines of communication and distribution, as well as agricultural and industrial production. In these early efforts, despite significant and crucial aid from UNKRA, the new government stood almost entirely alone. For although CPY leaders had originally hoped for massive Soviet aid, they soon had to accept that the Soviet Union itself had been badly damaged by the war and was unable (or unwilling) to raise Yugoslavia out of its poverty. Consequently, economic tasks occupied a major proportion of the new government's energy, and party leaders regularly warned that failure in the economic sphere could threaten to overturn all their wartime moral and political victories. Immediately following the liberation of Belgrade, various party documents had begun to stress the overwhelming importance of economic activities. Youth leader Milijan Neoreclc', for example, stated, Today a good member of the party and SKOJ [the Communist youth organization] is one who is a good merchant. A good member of the party is one who knows to bring food products to Belgrade and to sell them at regulated prices. Today we must be good grocers, good engineers, and good merchants. The survival of the broad popular masses depends upon it.19

By late 1947, the country's economic status, while far from prosperous, seemed at least relatively stable. Following the Soviet-Yugoslav split, however, economic issues were once again the subject of enormous concern. Now bordered by unfriendly nations on all sides, Yugoslavia faced greatly increased defense needs, while at the same time the Soviet and Eastern European economic blockade inhibited the party's ability to carry out its economic agenda as specified by the Five Year Plan. These considerations altered CPY policies in a number of areas. For example, according to Susan Woodward, economic requirements (though caused by a change in the country's international status) were primary in both

Setting the Stage

29

the party's disastrous decision to accelerate its campaign for the socialization of the countryside in 1949 and its later introduction of workers' self-management.20 A second circumstance that inevitably shaped the form and content of CPY domestic policies was the national question. From the moment of its formal inception in December 1918, Yugoslavia's fate was inextricably connected with the relations between its constituent nations and nationalities. Despite claims to the contrary, Yugoslavia's recent conflicts have not resulted from "ancient ethnic hatreds." It is true that a degree of tension has long existed between many of the peoples of Yugoslavia; yet that tension has only periodically produced violence. During much of their long history, Yugoslavia's ethnic groups have managed to coexist on the Balkan peninsula reasonably peacefully, if not harmoniously. Indeed, during the 19th and 20th centuries the growth of Serb, Croat, Slovene, and other national ideologies was accompanied by the development of "Yugoslavism" as a kind of South Slavic national identity. The precise content of the Yugoslav national idea varied considerably over time and among different national groups; nonetheless, its popularity among many in the region should not be dismissed. Unfortunately, much of that appeal was squandered during the interwar period by the Serbian-dominated government's insensitive and bullying approach to the country's other constituent peoples. Even so, the strongest expression of hostility among Yugoslavia's nations came only during the Second World War with the genocidal policies of the Croatian fascist UstaSa and the subsequent massacres of Croats and Muslims by Serbian Cetnik organizations. The legacy of hatred caused by those events was perhaps the greatest challenge that Yugoslavia's postwar Communist party would face. Indeed the Communist regime deserves some credit for tempering those hostilities and maintaining peace among the Yugoslav nations for nearly 50 years. Yet, as is now clear, the Communists may also be blamed for failing ultimately to face the national problem head on and find a lasting solution. The position of the CPY concerning the national question had varied during the interwar period from complete indifference and unitarism to advocating the mandatory dissolution of Yugoslavia as an artificial creation of Versailles. By the beginning of the war, however, the party had finally settled on a federal solution to the problem within a united Yugoslavia. From the very beginning of Yugoslavia's occupation, the party spoke out for national self-determination and the equality, brotherhood, and unity of all Yugoslav nations within a federal structure that ultimately included the six sovereign republics of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro, the autonomous province of Vojvodina, and the autonomous region of Kosovo-Metohia.

30

Setting the Stage

The federal structure of new Yugoslavia did not provide the individual republics with any real independence since decision making within the party and state remained highly centralized. Yet even if largely a formality, the party's federal solution did show that it valued each constituent nation, and CPY adherence to it was a key source of its postwar legitimacy, Yet CPY policies concerning the national question were often inconsistent as the party sought a balance between its more popular support for decentralized federalism and its ideologically based centralism. On the one hand, party leaders consistently stressed the equality of all nations in new Yugoslavia, insisting that all Serbs, Croats, and so on were both citizens of a common homeland and free within their federal units. They also sought to pacify national hostilities and fears by stressing the importance of national tolerance and, especially, the "brotherhood and unity" of Yugoslavia's nations and nationalities.21 Yet, in seeking to paper over Yugoslavia's national question, the Communist regime refused fully to confront the atrocities committed during the war, treating them only as additional signs of the prewar bourgeois government's moral and political bankruptcy.22 Moreover, for all their talk of national self-determination, party leaders were not about to permit the dissolution of Yugoslavia. After all, without a united Yugoslavia, there was no role for a ruling Communist party of Yugoslavia. Nor, in these early years at least, would party leaders allow any such decentralization or "local particularism" as might hinder their ability to control and direct the country. As Tito explained in several speeches during the spring of 1945, federalism did not imply any form of separatism or particularism and no federal unit should become strong at the expense of the others. Rather, he said, the point was to create out of them all one powerful Yugoslav national state.23 In practice, of course, the party's attempts to balance national equality and Yugoslav unity met with mixed success at best. A final characteristic of the domestic scene confronting CPY leaders as they took power was the generally chaotic social and moral atmosphere caused by four years of foreign occupation and civil war. Despite CPY attempts to forge unity, a variety of national, religious, political, and social factors deeply divided the Yugoslav population. The massacres committed by various factions could not be forgotten overnight, nor could members of such wartime political enemies as the Partisans, Cetrtiks, UstaSe, Ljoticlsts, and Slovene or Croat Home Guards be easily reconciled. In addition, individuals who had taken active part in the struggle or had seen their villages burned and loved ones murdered often had little but contempt for those who had waited out the war in comfort either abroad or in the major occupied cities. It is no surprise, therefore, that high levels of

31

Setting the Stage

emotional intensity and irrational outbursts of anger characterized postwar Yugoslav society. Even discounting the elements of fratricide and revolution, the very atmosphere of war—where fear and death were daily occurrences, and lies and deception could represent supreme virtues—was enough to cause serious social dislocation and massive uncertainty and trepidation. One contemporary of the time has suggested that even the enormous enthusiasm characteristic of the postwar period was the result of collective psychosis. The fear and trauma were so great, he argues, that they required some outlet and the only safe and possible one was positive.24 The fear and uncertainty that saturated Yugoslav society may be most clearly perceived in the myriad rumors that spread through the country after the war. Most of these rumors concerned the likelihood of a new war. Many, for example, anticipated some sort of alliance between local allies or enemies (Cetoiks, UstaSe, etc.) and the Western powers, leading to a change in government and massive reprisals against all who had cooperated with the Communist regime. Fear of bombing attacks remained so strong that long after the war had ended some people still ran for cover when Yugoslav planes passed overhead. Others, meanwhile, whispered that America had invented a gas that would put the entire population of the country asleep for 24 hours.25 Other prevalent rumors found their source in domestic political events or in folk or religious superstitions. Some people feared the immediate comrrtunization of all property and families, or even that their children would be rounded up and sent to Russia, Several rumors implied the existence of national conflicts between top CPY leaders, while others referred to assassination attempts on Tito. Finally, many peasants in several parts of the country believed that a meteorite would soon fall from the sky, wiping out the entire Yugoslav population.26 It was in this war-torn and impoverished land, caught between East and West, with a society rent by national, religious, political, and social tensions and a population in fear of imminent war or falling meteorites, that the CPY dreamed of creating its Communist utopia. The precise outlines and dimensions of the party's policies of persuasion depended, however, not only on the circumstances within which it operated, but also on the media and agents entrusted to implement those policies.

Notes 1. It may be argued with some justification that CPY efforts to remake society in Yugoslavia actually began either in November 1943 with the second meeting of

32

Setting the Stage

AVNOJ or with the final liberation of Yugoslavia in April 1945.1 have chosen the median date based on the liberation of Belgrade not only for its symbolic importance, but also because in the former period so much of the party's attention focused on efforts to liberate the country, while to begin the examination only in April 1945 would exclude from consideration the extremely vigorous persuasive campaigns that developed in the winter of 1944-1945. 2. Among the more important English-language sources for the inter/war period, in Yugoslavia are Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); Aleksa Djilas, The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); J. B. Hoptner, Yugoslavia in Crisis, 1934-1941 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962); Andrew Wachtel, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 3. On the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the interwar era see Ivan Avakumovic', The History of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Vol. \ (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1964); Banac, The National Question; Djilas, The Contested Country; Jill Irvine, The Croat Question: Partisan Politics in the Formation of the Yugoslav Socialist State (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993). 4. Josip Broz Tito, cited in Pero Moraia and Stanislav Stojanovic", eds., Povijest Saveza bmntnista Jugoslavije (Belgrade: Izdavafiki center Komunist, 1985), 233. 5. For information on and analyses of the elections see Branko Petranovic, PolitiCke i pravne prilike za vreme privremene vlade DFj (Belgrade: 1964), 186-205; Informativni prirufnik o Jugoslaviji, OpSti podaci o politifkotn, privrednom, socijalnom, kulturnom i prosvetnom iwoiu u Federathmoj narodnoj republid Jugoslaviji, November-December 1948 (Belgrade: 1948-1951), 61-64; Rajko Kuzmanovi4 Privremena tmrodna skupStina DFJ (Belgrade: 1981), 76-87, 143-149; Stojan T. Tomic', "Izbori u vrijeme revolucionarnog etatizma 1945-1953," in SkupStinski izbori u Jugoslaviji, 1942-1982 (Belgrade: 1983), 75-101; Vojislav KoStunica and Kosta Cavo§ki, Party Pluralism or Monism, Social Movements and the Political System in Yugoslavia, 1944-1949 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), 125-126. 6. Dulan Bilandzic, Historija Socijalistifke Federativne Republike Jugoslavije: Glavni pmcesi, 1918-1985 (Zagreb; Skolska knjiga, 1985), 115. 7. Cited in Robert Barry Farreil, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union 1948-56 (Hamden, CT: Shoestring Press, 1956), 69. 8. "Odluke i direktive CK KP, Svim Centralnim komitetima KP Republika," 22 June 1950, Partijska izgradnja, 6 (1950): 55-60, 9. Moraca and Stojanovic:, 376. 10. "Rezolucija Cetvrtog plenuma CKKPJ o teorijskom radu u KPJ," and Milovan Djilas, "O teorijskom radu naSe partije," 3-4 June 1951, in Branko Petranovic', Ranko Konfiar and Radovan Radonjil, eds., Sednice Centmlnog komiteta KPJ (1948-1952) (Belgrade: IzdavaCki centar Komunist, 1985), 639,589-597; Predrag J. Markovtf, Beogmd izmedju istoka izapada, 1948-1965 (Belgrade: 1996), 173-174. 11. "Znacaj Sestog Kongresa Saveza Komunista Jugoslavije," Komunist, 5, no. 1 (1953): 5-8.

Setting the Stage

33

12. Dennison Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment, 1948-1974 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 78, 13. For more information on these conflicts see Vladimir Dedijer, The Battle Stalin Lost, Memoirs of Yugoslavia, 1948-1953 (New York: Viking Press, 1970), 31-35, 48-54, 73-96; Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962), 8-11, 87-124, 133-142, 173-184; Milovan Djilas, Rise and Fall (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 77-98, 145-153, 163-172; Ivo Banac, With Stalin Against Tito, Cominformist t Splits in Yugoslav Communism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 4-44, 14. "Sednica CK KPJ sa Birom CK KP Slovenije," 4 Dec. 1945, ACKSKJ, HI/9; Letter to editorial boards from Ivan Sibl, December 1946, HDA, CKKPHAP; "Dnevne direktive i zadaci u agitaciji i stampi 1948," 1948, ACKSKJ, VIII H/l-a-14; "Instrukcija CK KPJ o iuvanju driavnih tajna u Stampi, filmu i na radiju," 1948, ACKSKJ, VIII I/l-a-9. 15. For an excellent analysis of the impact of Western and Soviet ideologies on the population of Belgrade between 1948 and 1965 see Markovid 16. For a thorough description of precisely how the CPY adjusted its economic policies in response to international events see Susan Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia 1945-1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 17. An estimated 75 percent of the population made its living from agriculture while manufacturing accounted for only 26.8 percent of the GNP, Rusinow, xviii. 18. Rusinow, 19. 19. Milijan Neorecic, "Savetovanje PK SKOJ za Srbiju," Spring 1945, ACKSKJ, CKSKOJ Ha-2/1. 20. Woodward, 98-163. 21. "Drug Tito govorio u Celju i Osijeku," Rod, 9 June 1945; "Ekspoze pretsednika Ministarskog saveta MarSala Tita," Selo, 6 Aug. 1945; Milovan Djilas, Speech at the Second Plenum of the USAOJ, 5-8 Sept. 1945, AJ, SSOJ-27; "Govor MarSala Tita u Cajeti.ru," Politika, 9 July 1946. 22. For a description of how the party avoided these issues in its educational curriculum see Wolfgang Hopken, "History Education and Yugoslav (Dis-)Integration," in Melissa Bokovoy, Jill Irvine, and Carol Lilly, eds., State-Society Relations in Yugoslavia: 1945-1991 (New York and London: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 79-104. 23. "Iz govora generalnog sekretara KPJ Josipa Broza Tita na osnivackom kongresu KP Srbije," 8-12 May 1945, in Branko Petranovic" and Momfilo Ze&vic, Jugoslovenski fedemlizam: Meje i stvarnosti, Vol. 2 (Belgrade: 1987), 158-159; "Prvi govor Marsala Tita u oslobodjenom Zagrebu," Politika, 23 May 1945; "Govor Mariala Tita u Ljubljanu," Slobodtm Vojvodina, 28 May 1945. 24. Milo Gligorijevic, Odgovor Mica PopoviC (Belgrade: 1984), 35. See also "Information about Human Rehabilitation of Children and Young People," March 1945, AJ, MP-3; DuSan Baranin, "Psihoza straha," Selo, 15 April 1945. 25. "Izvjestaj OK SKOJ za Gorski kotar," 4 July 1945, HDA, PKSKOJ-H; "Neprijateljske parole od marta 1946 g. do aprila 1947 g. na teritoriju FNRJ," 14 April 1947, ACKSKJ, VIII Vl/2-h-2.

34

Setting the Stage

26, See "Izvestaj OK KPH Gorski kotar," 9 June 1945, HDA, CKKPH; "Izvjegtaj politiCke situadje" from OO Bjelovar, 4 July 1945, HDA, RKSSRNH-1; "IzvjeStaj OK SKOJ Varazdin," 4 Aug. 1945, HDA, PKSKOJ-H-1; "Mesecni izvestaj OK SKOJ PoZarevac," 13 April 1946, ACKSKJ, CKSKOJ III b-1/6; "Neprijateljske parole."

2 Tools of the Trade: The Apparatus for Cultural Change

CPY efforts at social and cultural change in Yugoslavia unfolded within a complex, multilayered, and interconnected apparatus headed by three institutional entities: the party, the state, and the mass organizations. These entities, while institutionally distinct, were joined by the overriding power and influence of Communist party members in each. Indeed, the CPY carefully secured its leadership in all institutions with a persuasive agenda by placing party members in the leading positions of nearly all public and state forums, including the army, the media, mass organizations, film production companies, state publishing agencies, and the ministry of education,1 Persuasive policies thus originated at the top levels of the party. They were implemented, however, by a wide variety of committees and councils within not only the party, but also the state and various mass organizations.

The Communist Party The Communist Party of Yugoslavia was unquestionably the primary source of cultural and persuasive policies in the new state. In accordance with the new federal structure of postwar Yugoslavia, the CPY was organized on both a federal and a hierarchical basis. Slovenia and Croatia had formed their own individual Communist parties already in 1937, while the remainder of Yugoslavia's new federal units formed separate parties during and just after the war. The existence of separate parties did not, however, imply their independence, since the principle of democratic centralism obligated all lower bodies to carry out decisions adopted by central organs. Thus, directives and instructions traveled downward through the party hierarchy, from the Politburo and Central Committee 35

36

Tools of the Trade: The Apparatus for Cultural Ctiange

of the CPY, to the central committees of the federal units, and then through regional, district, township, city, and local party committees. The main decision-making body of the postwar CPY was an ad hoc, informally selected Politburo whose actual membership was unclear even to the top leaders. (Evidently some leaders were not sure whether they had attended its meetings as regular members or as occasional guests.)2 The top four leaders of the Politburo, however, and those with ultimate power and responsibility were Josip Broz Tito, Edvard Kardelj, Aleksandar Rankovic', and Milovan Djilas. Josip Broz Tito clearly stood out as top man in the party whose authority and position of respect were absolutely unquestioned.3 Tito's authority derived from a broad combination of factors, including his social origin (as one of the few top CPY leaders who had actually been a worker), his considerable experiences in the Soviet Union, his success in unifying and bolshevizing the CPY, his demonstrated abilities as a politician and to a lesser extent as a military leader, and last, but not least, his own personal charisma. Tito attracted the loyalty of other CPY leaders and ordinary Yugoslav citizens alike apparently as much by his personal qualities as by his leadership skills. It is typical, for example, that one of the most popular wartime songs about Tito referred to him not as a powerful military figure or an impressive politician but as a "little white violet."4 Every official policy required Tito's approval and in cases of uncertainty or internal disagreement, Tito represented the ultimate arbiter. Yet, Tito was not himself a theoretician and was not always deeply involved even in policy formation, much less implementation. Thus, although Tito's aura hangs over all CPY activities, his name arises only sporadically throughout this work. The names of Edvard Kardelj and Aleksandar Rankovis: also appear only occasionally in this work, although both men were crucial to the development of postwar Yugoslav policies. As a well-educated intellectual and seasoned Communist, Kardelj was the primary theoretician and ideologist of the CPY. But Kardelj tended to concentrate on large-scale political and economic activities and was often only peripherally involved in the more detailed and culturally oriented policies covered by this work. Rankovic, meanwhile, as head of the Yugoslav secret police, supervised the enforcement of many policies addressed in this study. But while it is worth remembering that Rankovid and the secret police stood behind each policy, the focus of this work lies on the persuasive rather than the coercive element of CPY activity. The CPY leader who directed the party's persuasive and cultural policies was Milovan EJjilas. The character and personality of this enigmatic Montenegrin, who went from being a top leader in the Yugoslav Corn-

Tools of the Trade: Tlte Apparatus for Cultural Change

37

munist movement to its most celebrated and outspoken dissident, have been the source of considerable interest and speculation. Was he a true idealist who suddenly realized that the party had somehow gone astray, a born fanatic genetically inclined toward rebellion, or a political opportunist interested only in remaining in the limelight?5 Certainly up until the split with the Soviet Union, Djilas appeared to be one of the most severe and dogmatic leaders of the CPY, utterly devoted to Stalin, the Soviet Union, and the ultimate cause of communism. What then could explain his remarkable transformation into an avid proponent of democratization? My own sense is that Djilas was ruled by his belief in the value of consistency with one's principles, over and above issues of either humanity or practicality. Thus, when he accepted the principles associated with Stalinism (especially the notion that the ends justify the means), he was ruthless in their application. Later, however, when he adopted the principles of democratization, he sought to apply them with equal vigor and consistency, regardless of the consequences for his party or himself. In any case, it is also true that even when spouting the Stalinist party line in the mid-1940s, Djilas's essays displayed a level of sophistication not found in the writings of many of his colleagues. Certainly Djilas was no elevated Marxist theoretician, but he was able to perceive or construct certain nuances within the party line and to express them through manipulation of the written word.6 Besides Djilas, a broad variety of other leading Communists and intellectuals like Radovan Zogovic1, Vladimir Dedijer, Rodoljub Colakovic1, Veljko Vlartovic:, Mitra Mitrovi^, Milijan Neoredic, and Bora Drenovac directly influenced the party's persuasive and cultural policies. The decision-making process at these top levels took place in an extremely informal manner, often through personal conversations, the conclusions of which were only subsequently (if ever) formalized in written documents. Entitled "reports" or "circular letters," these documents often lacked any claim of authorship. In many cases, the individual author was indeed irrelevant, as the document simply repeated the party line in the official Communist terminology. After all, top leaders generally agreed about the ultimate goals of the party, its correct political and ideological line, and—with some important exceptions—even the essential program required to attain those goals.7 At lower levels, too, party leaders in many regions worked together very closely. The intimacy among CPY leaders resulted in part from their common wartime experiences; it continued after the war both out of necessity and due to a sort of siege mentality among party members. For while Communists bore responsibility for all political, economic, social, and cultural activity in a region, they often made up only a tiny minority of

38

Tools of the Trade: The Apparatus for Cultural Ctiange

the local population. Consequently, each available activist held multiple positions and they all worked closely together to both maintain their grasp on power and fulfill the ever-increasing tasks assigned from above. The Departments of Agitation and Propaganda The main organs for cultural change within the Communist party were the departments of agitation and propaganda, or agitprop. As Djilas explained in September 1945, the goal of the agitprop apparatus was "to concentrate, directly or indirectly, all political, cultural, educational, and scientific life in the hands of the party"; to channel correctly the aspirations of the populace for culture; and to prevent all efforts by enemy elements to direct cultural life toward their interests.8 While no unified or fully organized agitprop department had existed in the prewar CPY, already from the early stages of the war, an agitprop department attached to the Supreme Staff consciously managed cultural and educational life in both Partisan units and liberated territory.9 The postwar organization of agitprop departments properly commenced in June 1945 with the division of the party's Central Committee into 12 departments and commissions, including a department of agitation and propaganda headed by Milovan Djilas.10 Agitprop departments, commissions, or sections were also to be formed at all levels of the party hierarchy. The organizational development of agitprop bodies proceeded at different speeds and with varying degrees of success in different parts of the country, but within a relatively short period most parry organizations had created some internal body to help realize party tasks by cultural and educational means. The internal structure of agitprop departments went through several preliminary stages, but most often included four main sectors, each with several subdepartments. According to the system established in the spring of 1946, the departments consisted of a sector for agitation and the press to transmit and interpret party decisions and the party line through the press and by other oral and visual means; a theoretical sector to verify the ideological purity expressed in party rhetoric, to guard against deviations from orthodox Marxism-Leninism, and to ensure the correct Marxist-Leninist education of both the masses and party cadres; a cultural sector that was responsible for the organization and development of all cultural life including the theater, film, music, art, various exhibits, and literary presentations and publications; and an organizational sector that handled the material and financial aspects of the department, as well as organizing its statistics and bookkeeping.11 The number of professional party functionaries required to staff agitprop departments varied

Tools of the Trade: Tlte Apparatus for Cultural Change

39

over time and place, but generally increased in the period from 1945 to 1950. The primary tasks of agitprop departments were determined in Belgrade most often through informal agreements among top CPY leaders. These duties were then elaborated in the central department of agitprop and passed downward to regional and local agitprop bodies by a variety of methods. The central agitprop department sent regular mernos to regional party, state, and mass organizations providing them with material, information, and recommendations. Or, if the matter was urgent, one of the leaders of the central agitprop department, such as Djilas, Radovan Zogovic, or Stefan Mitrovic, would simply telephone a corresponding leader in the regional or local agitprop department and transmit the necessary instructions. Since, in theory, agitprop commissions of higher and lower bodies were not directly connected to each other, memos of the central agitprop department were generally issued by the Central Committee, endowing them with a distinctly obligatory tone. Essentially, then, these memos were directives that articulated the party line on all manner of issues and events. An agitprop memo might explain the party's views on some recent domestic or foreign political event, establish the correct policy for theatrical or radio repertoires, provide the curricula and reading lists for party or professional courses, make recommendations for publishing houses, or provide "theses for the press" and exemplary slogans for upcoming celebrations. The degree of specificity in the directives varied considerably. In theory, the central agitprop department was to provide only the basic line and content, leaving each local body sufficient leeway to develop its own initiative and tailor each topic to the concrete conditions of its region. In some cases, however, the instructions were extremely detailed. One directive from Djilas to the department of agitation and propaganda of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia, for example, instructed that no publications begun by the UstaSe were to continue no matter what, that as many realist writers as possible should be published as cheaply as possible, and that the publication of "decadent," "semi-pornographic," and "pessimistic" literature must be avoided at all costs. In another, Djilas deleted specific works from Croatia's publishing plan for 1947 as insufficiently important, politically unreliable, or—often—without any explanation whatsoever. That such interference was not always restricted to obviously political materials may be seen by the Croatian agitprop department's request to central agitprop for a decision on whether or not to publish Ivan Supek's A History of Physics from Oldest Times to Atomic Energy.12

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Tools of the Trade: The Apparatus for Cultural Ctiange

Another centrally produced document, entitled "Directive Letter from the Central Committee of the CPY to all Central Committees and Regional Committees in Connection with the Celebration of the Tenth Anniversary of the Death of the Writer Maxim Gorky," provided detailed instructions for celebrating the June 18 event. According to this directive, all agitprop departments were to supervise the following preparations to publicize the life of this Russian author whose works were considered models of the new socialist literature. All theaters were to prepare something by Gorky and before the performance give a short lecture about him; all schools were to hold special assemblies with lectures on Gorky and readings from his works; all villages were to hold public assemblies or lectures involving the best known educational workers of that area; all factories and workshops were to hold short assemblies; and all institutions of higher learning were to hold assemblies involving specialists in Gorky's work. The June or July issue of every literary journal was to be devoted entirely to Maxim Gorky and should include two or three essays on his literary activity, several excerpts from his writings, some memoir or personal essay about him, original literature contributed in Gorky's honor, a bibliography of his works in the Yugoslav languages, information about the censorship of Gorky in prewar Yugoslavia, and information about his publications in the Soviet Union. All other journals were also to include at least one article commemorating Gorky, and the daily papers were to dedicate a large section of their June 18 issue to him. The writers' unions were also to hold meetings, lectures, and readings in celebration of the author; cinemas were to show a Soviet movie, preferably one based on one of Gorky's works; and, finally, the press was to follow and record all of the cultural presentations and manifestations held for this event.13 Agitprop leaders also transmitted party policy by publishing articles in various newspapers and journals. Articles appearing in the party's main directive organ, Borba—especially those by top leaders of the Central Committee—represented the official party line. According to Djilas, each agitprop department was to carefully study and rework such articles, making them accessible to the masses. Meanwhile, the leader of each agitprop department's section for the press monitored the content of both the local and central press to ensure that "the local press correctly applies and interprets the directives of the central press. ... He takes into account which people should join the editorial boards of party and other newspapers and journals, and if necessary, himself joins certain important editorial boards."14 Ultimately, party forums and individual members were expected to take any and all measures necessary to realize the decisions expressed in the press.15 An example of how this might work is provided by Marko

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Lopu§ina in his book on censorship in Yugoslavia. According to Lopusina, Djilas effectively killed the drama Knez od Zete by publishing an anonymous critique of it in Borba. Even though the article was unsigned, the Zagreb theater's directors knew that anyone writing in Borba had to be powerful and so they withdrew the play from their repertoire, Lopusina also claims that the play's director, Oskar Danon, received a party punishment, while its composer, Jovan Konjovic, gave up the theater for a safer occupation tending a fruit orchard.16 Incidentally, a later critique of the play by Natko Devfic (a non-Communist but cooperative composer and professor of the Musical Academy in Zagreb) explained that the Zagreb masses had been so disgusted by the play that they closed it down, thus proving that the Yugoslav public had high standards and would not tolerate bad art.17 A third way that agitprop departments conducted policy was in direct meetings with the leaders of relevant institutions. Agitprop departments maintained constant contact with the heads of all important bodies and held irregular meetings as needed with various cultural bodies, including the cultural sectors of youth, women's, or trade union organizations; music schools; or the Radio Committee. The central agitprop department also held regular meetings with the editorial boards of all major newspapers and journals (paying particular attention to Borba) in order to discuss current events, their correct political interpretation, and any problematic matters. Finally, agitprop departments transmitted information and policy by sending their own members out into the field in order to provide "more direct supervision and aid."18 The departments might send out individual members or, on occasion, they would create actives for this purpose. These bodies of especially qualified party members temporarily convened to fulfill a particular persuasive task could be used strictly for internal party purposes, as for giving lectures to various party organizations, or for giving lectures and promoting the party line among the wider public. Although the departments of agitation and propaganda were by far the most important source of persuasive and cultural policies within the CPY, certain other party commissions—including the women's commission and the commission for schools—also provided forums for the elaboration and transmission of party rhetoric. Within such bodies, Communists with a particular interest in women's issues or education could work out the details of party policy in those areas, hold meetings with the relevant state or mass organizations, and prepare articles and directives for publication or transmission to lower bodies. One final source of persuasive activity closely connected to the CPY was its Communist youth organization, SKOJ (Savez komunisti^ke omladine Jugoslavije).

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SKO} Yugoslav Communists considered youth and children to be especially important for both the immediate success of their policies and the eventual achievement of communism. In the short run, the party valued youth as a reserve of enthusiastic, energetic, and highly impressionable actors on whom it could call to fulfill various concrete tasks. In the long run, however, youth and children were even more important as those who would eventually realize the goals and dreams of the party. If, as the Communists believed, the attitudes and values necessary to make communism possible would develop only under conditions of socialism, children raised in a socialist system would be the first to possess those new values and would ensure the future of the country and of social progress worldwide. Youth and children would ultimately create the Communist society, while those raised under capitalism could only prepare the ground for them. Attention to the role of youth in the Yugoslav Communist party led to the formation of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia, SKOJ, in October 1919. The party's popular front line in the late 1930s, along with the growing threat from fascism, facilitated SKOJ's development and by the end of 1940 it claimed a membership of close to 30,000—more than twice the number enrolled in the CPY.19 Thanks to the extremely widespread participation of youth in the wartime Partisan movement, SKOJ's membership further grew to 150,000 by the end of the war and over 330,000 by mid-1948.20 Theoretically, SKOJ operated under the direct supervision of party leaders who provided it with concrete tasks and instructions for work. SKOJ's goals were to help realize party policies among youth, to provide a reservoir of future party cadres through theoretical and ideological education of its members, and to provide leadership for non-Communist youths in schools and in the broader youth organization, the People's Youth of Yugoslavia (PYY). Indeed, SKOJ members were extremely active in promoting party policy, especially with regard to the struggle against religion and bourgeois concepts in culture. In addition, SKOJ members actively campaigned for party-approved candidates in federal, republic, and local elections; helped mobilize youth for volunteer labor actions; and assisted the government in carrying out various economic and agricultural policies, including the organization of factory competitions and grain requisitioning. The State Although most persuasive activities in new Yugoslavia originated within the party, the CPY also used the enormous resources provided by its con-

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trol over the state to realize its program for social change. After all, according to one internal report, the first question of revolution—that is, of the transition from one stage of social development to another—was power. Only party control over the legislative, judicial, and executive functions of government could ensure real social and economic progress, "Without a good state apparatus which will stubbornly work for the mobilization of the masses," Djilas explained, "we would not be able to realize the tasks which stand before us."21 State power provided the party with both the opportunity to create new laws and the ability to enforce those laws. While many of the regime's new laws were concerned with strictly political or economic issues, others were designed to bring about changes in the existing social and cultural order. Control over the state also, of course, gave the CPY the monopoly over the organs of justice and force necessary to eliminate all opposition to its regime. Party members were placed in the leading positions of the army, police, secret police, and judicial system in order to ensure their compliance with party dictates.22 Finally, state control offered party leaders the chance to establish a broad moral, social, and cultural agenda for the Yugoslav population and to promote that agenda through publishing and the press, the educational system, and official policies toward religion and the family. Publishing and the Press

The new state was especially concerned to establish its control over the mass media and all publications. Yugoslav officials regularly insisted in public that the press and all other publications were legally free in postwar Yugoslavia and that "there are no organs of state administration which could direct the press or exercise control by means of censorship or in any other way."23 In fact, however, the party and the state clearly regulated the media and publishing through a complex network of direct and indirect means.24 First of all, although the Communist regime did not immediately nationalize printing presses, publishing agencies, or movie theaters, it did manage to confiscate most of them on usually shaky grounds that their owners had collaborated with the occupiers during the war. Moreover, while Article 1 of the "Law on the Press," passed in August 1945, stated that "no one can be prevented from the free expression of his/her opinion by means of the press," it also added, "except in those cases provided for by this law." Then, in an unapologetic attempt to make possible a purge of journalists and to forbid publication activity to those who "used the press for immoral and filthy purposes," the law required prospective publishers of newspapers and periodicals to apply for permission to the public prosecutor 14 days in advance. Articles 6 and 11 of the law sup-

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plied the long list of conditions under which an editor could be denied the right to publish or a publication could be denied distribution. Many of these conditions were so vaguely stated that, as Djilas pointed out, "there was nothing that could not be prohibited."25 For example, in March 1946 three British newspapers or journals were specifically denied entry and distribution in Yugoslavia because they were said to be full of insults and slanders and "systematically spread false and alarming news, which is in conflict with Article 11 of the Law on the Press."26 The state evidently considered books somewhat less influential than the periodical press, as their publication or distribution required no prior application or approval. Yet books, too, could be withdrawn from distribution under the provisions of the Law on the Press, and the party soon devised new methods of sabotaging private publishers and booksellers. Already in February 1945, a group of Belgrade booksellers complained that, while they welcomed the founding of new "people's" publishing companies and were looking forward to selling the new books, they hadn't been able to get hold of any because the publishing companies were opening their own stores and selling the new books only through them. Somewhat later the editors of the independent newspaper of the Republican party, Republika, reported that many newspaper distributors not only were not selling their newspaper but were harassing and intimidating any prospective customers.27 Foreign periodicals published in the Yugoslav languages or directed at the Yugoslav people had to obtain prior governmental approval, while most other foreign newspapers and periodicals were permitted free entrance into the state, but could be distributed only by governmentauthorized personnel.28 By late 1946, all foreign publications passed through the state publishing agency Jugoslovenska knjiga, which, according to one document from the central agitprop department, distributed only a few of them in major cities. Up to September 1946, it declared, only 25,000 copies of the British press had entered the country, and only 50 percent of them had been sold while the rest would be returned to their publishers.29 The CPY also exploited the government's exclusive right to designate those who would sell foreign publications, as evidenced by the following "strictly confidential" memo from the agitprop department of the Communist Party of Croatia to the District Party Committee of Karlovac: Find in the city of Karlovac one comrade, a member of the Communist party, who directs or owns a bookstore or tobacco shop, one that is not the property of the People's Front but is private. Entrust that comrade with the sale of Anglo-American newspapers and journals. He should not sell great quantities of the received newspapers but only a small number, while the

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majority should be sent back with a notation that the people do not buy those newspapers because of their reactionary writings, and with a request that in the future as few of them as possible be sent to him.30

Finally, although most individual newspapers, journals, and publishing firms theoretically fell under the control of various mass and political organizations, such as the People's Front, the People's Youth, or even the Croat Republican Peasant Party, the Communist-dominated government provided financial support and publishing supplies. Therefore, it could and did prevent the publication of many "undesirable" items through denial of paper or a printing press, or by various bureaucratic and delaying actions. Zogovic, for example, specifically recommended the use of such techniques in order to prevent the publication of religious literature directed at youth. Djilas has also recalled an encounter with the editor of the non-Communist newspaper Republika, "[The editor] came to me and said, 'Hey, don't sabotage us by not giving us paper,' and I said, 'No, really, there isn't any paper, its going badly!' But the truth was that we were giving the paper first of all to our own press."31 Education and Culture

The CPY exercised its control over education and cultural and artistic activities through local governmental bodies known as the People's Councils and through the federal and republic ministries of education. Even during the war, while the main purpose of People's Councils had been to secure supplies for the Partisans, direct economic life, and carry out communal and social services, they had also organized the cultural and educational life of their region. This aspect of state activity continued beyond the war and local organs of government took on such cultural tasks as opening and supplying schools, creating adult literacy courses, organizing cultural centers, and forming amateur cultural groups. At the federal and republic levels, the ministries of education took on full responsibility for financing, opening, and supplying the new state schools. Although the Communists permitted the continued existence of a few religious schools (mainly at the university level), they abolished most with the argument that it was necessary to unify and democratize education, eliminating the existence of separate and clearly unequal schools for the rich and poor.32 In fact, of course, the act was intended mainly to ensure party control over the form and content of all education. In addition, a directive from the central ministry of education in February 1945 stated that religious studies classes must no longer be considered an obligatory part of the school curriculum.33 Student participation in the optional religious studies courses varied over time and place, but

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gradually regime resistance to them increased until they were abolished in 1952.34 Meanwhile, the Communist-dominated state determined the class curricula and course content for state schools. All textbooks, for example, had to be approved by the republic ministries of education, which forbade the use of many, requiring their replacement by more ideologically correct texts often translated from Russian. In addition, since the ministries of education also controlled employment policy, they could ensure that those teachers who opposed the new regime would lose their positions, allowing others who were more loyal (even if less qualified) to replace them. The party also paid considerable attention to the teachers' schools, greatly increasing their numbers and shortening their duration of training in an effort to increase the pool of educational cadres as quickly as possible. The party used similar methods to exercise direct and indirect supervision over cultural-artistic personnel and their productions or performances. Immediately after the war, the new government took possession of drama theaters, opera houses, and concert halls and closely supervised the future management of these institutions. In addition, the state offered financial support to officially approved artistic organizations, sponsored various cultural performances and artistic exhibitions, and held artistic competitions in the fields of literature, drama, the fine arts, film, and music. The obvious stick that accompanied the carrot was, at best, loss or denial of the official financial and moral support and, at worst, the threat of imprisonment or execution. Uncooperative artists could be denied admission to official trade unions and while not forbidden to create, they then lost out on its material benefits. Those who needed further persuasion had only to recall that a number of artists accused of collaborating with the occupier had been fired, imprisoned, or even shot by the new regime. Religion and the Family Finally, the party used its control over the state in an effort to penetrate even the private lives of Yugoslavia's citizens. In particular, the Communist-dominated state used legislative means against the party's main ideological and cultural rival—religion. Officially, the new Yugoslav Constitution of 1946 guaranteed full freedom of conscience and religious belief, established full equality of all citizens regardless of religion, and permitted the performance of religious rites and the training of religious personnel. At the same time, however, and ostensibly in response to the allegedly divisive role religion had played in the region throughout history, the constitution banned churches from the field of politics, stating

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that "it is forbidden to misuse the church and religion for political ends, or to establish political organizations on a basis of religion."35 The state's main blows against the church, however, landed in the fields of education and economics. We have already seen how the state established its control over education. In economic terms, the land reform law of August 1945 legalized the confiscation of 85 percent of all church holdings without compensation, while the December 1946 "Law on the Nationalization of Private Economic Enterprises" deprived churches not only of the charitable foundations from which they had drawn considerable income but also of their printing presses, making them dependent on the government-owned publishers and printers.36 The degree of legal coercion applied against the churches varied considerably. Certainly, many priests were arrested and imprisoned, usually on dubious charges that they had collaborated with the Nazis or their domestic quislings. According to statistics provided by Serb historian Rada Radii, from the end of the war to April 1953,1,403 religious leaders from all of Yugoslavia's religious communities were convicted of serious political crimes. Among the Orthodox priests, 38 percent were convicted for collaborating with the occupier or domestic quislings, 22 percent for conspiring with traitors, 32 percent for spreading enemy propaganda, 1 percent for espionage, and 7 percent as Cominform bureau agents or for other unspecified reasons.37 The most famous case concerns the archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison for his purported collusion with the Ustasa. Leaving aside the still debatable truth of that accusation, there can be no doubt that Stepinac's real crime was his refusal to cooperate with and indeed his open criticism of the Communist regime.38 Finally, the state also employed legislative measures in its efforts to erode the bases of Yugoslavia's traditional patriarchal culture. MarxistLeninist ideology includes among its principles the full legal, economic, and social equality of women. Accordingly, the new Yugoslav Constitution stipulated that "all citizens, regardless of sex ... who are over eighteen years of age have the right to elect and be elected to all organs of state authority." Moreover, Article 24 was entirely devoted to the legal status of women, specifying their full equality with men in all fields, and providing working mothers with special economic protection, including the right to equal pay for equal work and three months' paid maternity leave. The "Law on Marriages" further stipulated full equality of both partners in all spheres, while the "Law on the Rights and Duties of Parents" declared them to be the same for both the mother and the father regardless of whether or not they were married. The new state also passed laws allowing for more accessible divorce and providing full legal equality for legitimate and illegitimate children, even though similar laws had

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been rescinded or limited in the Soviet Union some 10 years previously.39 Finally, the state vowed to take responsibility for establishing day care centers and cafeterias to ease the double burden suffered by working women.40 Mass Organizations Beyond relying on party and state institutions, party leaders implemented their persuasive and cultural policies through the mass organizations of the People's Front of Yugoslavia (PFY), the League of Trade Unions (LTU), the People's Youth of Yugoslavia (PYY) and the Anti-fascist Front of Women (AFW), Unlike the CPY, which, despite enormous increases in membership, remained a party of cadres comprising less than 2 percent of registered voters, the PFY, LTU, PYY, and AFW were truly mass organizations that could count as members sometimes up to 80 percent of their constituent populations.41 These mass organizations propagated the party line in a broad variety of media, public educational programs, and cultural activities directed either at the broad public or particular segments of it. Each published newspapers, journals, and brochures; held public lectures, mass meetings, literacy and other courses, reading groups, study circles, and debate clubs; and organized cultural-educational and cultural-artistic societies, gymnastics and sports organizations, reading rooms, libraries, and "houses of culture" for their members. The importance of mass organizations as a medium for CPY persuasive policies was best described in an unsigned party document from 1947. The document began by stressing the persuasive character of CPY work among the masses and raised the question of how, specifically, the party could carry out its policies among them. In response, it traced the history of the People's Front from 1935 onward, asking, "Why did the Party want to create these organizations? So that it could feel the pulse of the masses and revolutionize them through party members located in these organizations, and so that, acting within the midst of these organizations, it could transmit its political concepts into life." If the party fulfilled its tasks only through its own members, the document continued, the road to victory would be long. By serving as examples among the masses and especially among youth, however, party members could accomplish much. After all, the document continued, "socialism is not built by a few individuals but by millions..,. that means that it is necessary to transform millions of people, the masses, into active builders of the new society."42 Since the party intended mass organizations, and especially the People's Front, to provide the political pillar of the new government, it put considerable effort into securing broad public participation in and sup-

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port for them. Consequently, the CPY often set its revolutionary plans and ideas on the back burner when dealing with these organizations. Their programs did not call for class struggle or socialist construction but focused on such generally accepted domestic and foreign policies as preserving the independence and unity of Yugoslavia; deepening the "brotherhood and unity" of the nations of Yugoslavia while guarding their complete equality; establishing brotherhood and cooperation with the Slavs and all "progressive" peoples (particularly the USSR); defending peace in the world; struggling against fascism and reaction and for increased democracy; providing general, political, and economic education for the masses; guaranteeing the equality of women; securing rights and opportunity for youth; establishing close ties between intellectual and physical workers; and helping the government with social problems. The program also, however, included several policies that were more clearly intended to serve the specific needs and interests of the Communistdominated government. The Front was asked, for example, to help secure the position of the new government, to supervise governmental work, to explain official policies to the masses, to mobilize them for the fulfillment of those tasks, and to help develop the consciousness and initiative of the people through persuasive means,43 The People's Front of Yugoslavia The flagship of the party's mass organizations was the People's Front of Yugoslavia. Membership in the PFY, which had reached 7 million by mid-1947, was not predicated on one's political affiliation, religious beliefs, or world view, and the Front included not only individual members but also other political parties and mass organizations. It accepted into its ranks, for example, a number of prewar political parties, including the Agrarian Party, the People's Peasant Party, the Social-Democratic Party, the Yugoslav Republican Party, the Independent Democratic Party, the Socialist Party, and the Croat Republican Peasant Party. The Front accepted these parties both in order to prevent them from uniting in opposition to it and to ease Western concerns about the spread of communism.44 The CPY, on the other hand, although clearly the leading force in the PFY, did not formally belong to it, apparently out of leftover conspiratorial habits. When asked point-blank by an American journalist why the CPY was not registered in the PFY, Tito responded only that that was a formal issue and the PFY was not a formal coalition but was created from below and led by the CPY throughout the war.45 In fact, the nature of the PFY and the role of political parties within it were a matter of some controversy between non-Communist leaders and the CPY. The leaders of non-Communist parties tended to describe the

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PFY as a coalition within which all parties would have equal rights.46 The CPY, on the other hand, always insisted that the PFY—despite its broad character and multiparty composition—was not a coalition. Rather, it claimed, the PFY was a unified political organization, created from below during the war, to which political leaders and parties other than the CPY had only subsequently attached themselves.47 The CPY thus demanded that each member-party or -group cooperate with others in common efforts and put aside its own narrow class or party interests, working only for the joint program of the Front. But while party leaders insisted that the CPY also had no narrow party interests and no program other than that of the PFY, in fact the reverse was true.48 For if the PFY was not a composite body or a power-sharing coalition, neither was it a "common people's political organization" as the CPY claimed. The CPY had accepted other parties into the Front primarily to neutralize their opposition and dilute their individuality, and was not about to share its leading role with them. As Djilas explained to a small group of intellectuals who had complained of their unequal status in the Front: "You're not equal and you can't be! Behind us Communists stand fifty divisions and a terrible war. You're only one little group. You have the wrong idea of equality. What's needed here isn't equality but understanding!"49 Finally, at the Fifth Party Congress in 1948, in response to Cominform accusations that the CPY had dissolved into the PFY, MoSa Pijade publicly explained that "the words of Comrade Tito that the Party has no other program outside of the program of the People's Front mean just the opposite, that the program of our Parry is also the program of the People's Front."50 Here was clearly a case where party leaders sought to manipulate preexisting institutions for their own purposes. They especially valued peasant parties like the Agrarian Party, the People's Peasant Party, and the Croat Republican Peasant Party as "transmission belts between the avant garde of democracy [i.e., the Communist party] and the peasant masses."51 Agitprop leaders in Croatia, for example, urged local activists to support the cultural organization of the Croat Republican Peasant Party as "one of the most suitable forms for gathering the village into the great work of our Republic."52 Indeed, although after the first year of Communist rule no one harbored any further illusions about CPY leadership of the PFY, it did draw many Yugoslav citizens into educational and cultural activities, particularly if they were not too heavily political or ideological. The League of Trade Unions As a member of the PFY, the League of Trade Unions took on responsibility for spreading the party's message among all workers and employees

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in the new state. While during the interwar period, the various trade union organizations had been disunited and subject to not only Communist but also Social Democratic and non-Marxist influences, already by January 1945 they had been fully united under the leadership of the CPY within the United League of Workers and Employees of Yugoslavia, later renamed the League of Trade Unions of Yugoslavia,53 The CPY clearly expected its influence among the working class and in the trade unions to be decisive and exclusive; the League of Trade Unions was to serve as a helping agent or transmission belt in the party's activity with the working class and must under no circumstances put itself above the party. As one party document put it, "the working class has many detachments— trade unions, cultural societies, etc.—but the only leading unit is the party. It is the conscious Marxist unit. Only it can determine the direction of class struggle."54 Unable to offer workers immediate improvements in their living and working conditions, party leaders theoretically understood that they must consciously encourage and nurture worker enthusiasm for the construction of a new and more just socialist society.55 In practice, however, CPY leaders often seemed to neglect persuasive activities among workers, apparently taking their support for granted. The party did, however, develop relatively vigorous cultural-educational policies toward the working class, hoping to raise their general, cultural, and ideological level and prepare them for their eventual leading role in society. By providing workers with the correct view of work and the world, CPY rhetoric sought to make them more efficient, as well as more conscious, creative, and willing to work for society. Trade union organizations thus offered workers a variety of educational opportunities, including lectures, reading groups, and Marxist-Leninist study circles. They even created a certain number of schools specifically for workers to educate them about the natural sciences, math, hygiene, Russian language, history, the new constitution, and so on. The unions also endeavored to raise the workers' cultural level by negotiating reduced prices on books and cultural events so that workers could afford them and by arranging collective, and sometimes free, visits to the theater, cinema, exhibits, museums, and concerts. In one case, students from the Musical Academy in Belgrade presented a program of pieces that were popular and "close to the workers," and then asked the workers to let them know what they liked and what they did not. The event was considered a great success since the workers were given the opportunity to enjoy musical art after a hard day's work, and the artists were able to get closer to the people they served.56 Trade unions provided workers with additional access to cultural materials in the workers' clubs and "red corners" of each enterprise. Although the financial resources available to trade union cultural-

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educational departments were quite small, many were at least able to provide a few copies of Soviet socialist realist literature (most commonly, Ostrovskii's How Steel Was Tempered), a radio for listening to musical and literary programs, and an occasional movie. Finally, the unions tried to involve workers in the creation of high culture within cultural-artistic societies so as to enable them to use the country's scientific and cultural means and heritage, and thus make high culture really and truly "the property of the masses."57 The People's Youth of Yugoslavia Given CPY recognition of the importance of youth, the predominant role played by the mass organization of youth is unsurprising. During the Second World War and in accordance with the party's general anti-fascist line, the Communist youth organization had begun to create broader, mass-based actives and councils, and in December 1942 it organized the founding congress of the United League of Anti-Fascist Youth of Yugoslavia (USAOJ), later renamed the People's Youth of Yugoslavia. Indeed, youth played a particularly important role during the Second World War and in the CPY's rise to power. They were among the first to join the Partisans and constituted 75 percent of its members. Over half of the leading cadres in the war were under the age of 26 and 90 percent of the martyred People's Heroes declared up to 1951 were under 23.58 While clearly organized and directed by Communist youth, the PYY was a much broader organization than SKOJ, counting by September 1948 1,415,763 members, or approximately 80 percent of youth in the country.59 Understanding that its goals could not be realized just through the efforts of Communists, the party ordered that almost all political, educational, and cultural work among youth be carried out within the youth organization. PYY organizations clearly were important agents for the party's program of social and cultural change, especially in rural areas where they not only participated in but often even directed village political, educational, and cultural life. PYY bodies in the villages cooperated with and aided the government in carrying out grain requisitions, mobilized youth to participate in volunteer labor brigades, played a significant role in the struggle to eradicate illiteracy, and often initiated the formation of various amateur cultural and sports societies. In urban areas, too, the PYY was particularly active in the creation and management of various cultural-educational, cultural-artistic, and gymnastic and sports organizations. It was, moreover, an ever-present promoter of party policies in the schools, where it created special suborganizations for work among secondary school youth and university student youth. A special subsidiary of the PYY, the Pioneer Organization, acted as the party's

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agent among children under 15, protecting them from "alien and harmful influences" and securing their education in the values and tasks established by the new regime. The Anti-fascist Front of Women Finally, party policies penetrated the consciousness of over half of Yugoslavia's postwar population through the Anti-fascist Front of Women. Founded in 1942 as a means of including women in the Communist-led struggle against national and social oppression, the AFW was never intended to represent women's interests or to fight for their rights.60 Rather, as Djilas explained, the question of women's equality was to be approached in such a way that it would "activate women to participate in the general people's public life and in the government, not as representatives of women but as the best children of the people,"61 After the war, although considering that the state had solved the women's question by providing them with legal equality, the party insisted on the continuing need for special work among women. The AFW was still important, according to one unsigned document, not as some separate "women's" organization struggling for their equality, but as an organization through which the party could approach the masses of women made backward by class society.62 In other words, the party considered the AFW just another mass organization that drew its tasks directly from the PFY and the party. Indeed, although the AFW had drawn fire during the war for separating itself from the broader tasks of the PFY, by the end of the war any feminist and separatist tendencies within the movement had been crushed. Among the main tasks of the postwar AFW was to raise the general educational and cultural level of women, providing numerous courses, lectures, and brochures on everything from better housekeeping to the construction of the new state. Certain AFW leaders, particularly Vida Tomslc, Cana Babovic, and Mitra Mitrovic, also consistently propagated not only social work and the maternal activities of women, but also their full and equal inclusion in the economic and political life of the country. Official CPY and state support for women's inclusion in the economy was much less consistent and increased only after the adoption of a Five Year Plan that specified a greatly increased need for labor.63 That need for female labor eventually also brought party and AFW leaders to a different understanding of the association of women with motherhood, impelling them to focus on the need for adequate and affordable day care. These, then, were the myriad party, state, and mass organizations on which CPY leaders relied to help realize the cultural transformation of

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Yugoslav society. In many ways, all of these organizations, including the state, represented only "transmission belts" for the party leadership. Yet, lest one be inclined to dismiss them on that account, it should be remembered that each, too, had its own membership, established goals, and vested interests. As we have seen, they were often targeted at certain segments of the population. Indeed, CPY official rhetoric most often categorized Yugoslavia's citizens as belonging to one of the following five groups: workers, peasants, people's intelligentsia, women, and youth.64 Internal party documents also differentiated between those who belonged to the Communist party or Communist youth organization and those who did not. Some degree of overlap was occasionally acknowledged, resulting in articles or speeches directed, for example, at young female workers. More often, however, party rhetoric and persuasive personnel adhered to these formal categories rather narrowly. Hence, each organization approached its assigned tasks in particular ways and presented CPY leaders with unique challenges. Notes 1. "O agitaciono-propagandnom radu KPJ," late 1945, early 1946, ACKSKJ, VIII I/2-a-35. 2. Dennisort Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment, 1948-1974 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 22, n. 38. 3. For more information on Tito see Stevan K. Pavlowitch, Tito—Yugoslavia's Great Dictator (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1992); Vladimir Dedijer, Tito (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953); Vladimir Dedijer, Novi prilozi za bi~ ogmfiju ]osipa Broza Tita, Vol. 3 (Belgrade: Rad, 1984); Milovan Djilas, Tito, The Story from Inside (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980); Phyllis Auty, Tito: A. Biography (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970). 4. "DruZe Tito, Ijubi&e bjela," folk melody arranged by J. §. Slavenski, score and lyrics published in Rod, 8 Sept. 1945, p. 3. 5. For more information on Djilas see Jevrem Brkovifi, Anatomija marala jednog Staljiniste (Zagreb: 1988); Stephen Clissold, Djilas, The Progress of a Revolutionary (UK: Maurice Temple Smith, 1983); Vladimir Dedijer, Veliki bimtovnik, Milovan Djilas, Prilozi za Mogmfiju (Belgrade: 1991); Momcilo Djorgovid, Djilas, Vernik i Jeretik (Belgrade: Akvarijus, 1989); Vasilije Kalezic, Djilas, kontroverze pisca i fifeologa (Belgrade: 1986); Dennis Reinhartz, Milovan Djilas: A Revolutionary as Writer (New York: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1981). 6. Djilas's persuasive writing skills may be seen also in his memoirs, making their interpretation a rather tricky matter. Yet even while many of his later writings are obviously self-serving and occasionally offer outright falsifications, they often confirm information and evaluations offered elsewhere and provide numerous useful insights concerning the basic ideas and motivations behind CPY policies. Djilas's memoirs include Land without Justice (New York: Harcourt Brace

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Jovanovich, 1958); Memoirs of a Revolutionary (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973); Wartime (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977); Conversations with Stalin (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962); Tito, Story from, the Inside (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980); Rise and Fall (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985). The latter has been especially useful for this study. 7. Woodward argues for more serious differences between party leaders over the party's political-economic strategy. Susan Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia 1945—1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). On differences within the CPY over the socialization of agriculture see Melissa Bokovoy, Peasants and Communists: Politics and Ideology in the "Yugoslav Countryside, 1941-1953 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), and A. Ross Johnson, The Transformation of Communist Ideology, The Yugoslav Case, 1945-1953 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1972). For a discussion of disagreements with Croat Communist leader Andrija Hebrang, see Jill Irvine, The Croat Question: Partisan Politics in the Formation of the Yugoslav Socialist State (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993). 8. Milovan Djilas, "Svim CK-ima i PK-ima o reorganizaciji agitacije i propagande," 6 Sept. 1945, HDA, CKKPH. 9. See, for example, Zlata Knezevic, Kulturno stvamlaStvo u revoluciji (Zagreb: 1981). 10. The 12 departments and commissions formed within the Central Committee of the CPY were: I) Organizational and Instructor's Department II) Cadres Department III) Department of Agitation and Propaganda IV) Trade Union Commission V) Military Commission VI) Women's Commission VII) Foreign Policy Commission VIII) Commission for Economic Policy IX) Commission for Schools X) Commission for the Construction of People's Power XI) Commission for Social Policy XII) Control Commission. The central committees of the federal units were similarly organized but lacked the Foreign Policy Commission and the Control Commission. "Sednica CK KPJ," 30 June 1945, ACKSKJ, HI/4. 11.1: Sector for Agitation and the Press a) dept. for information (Radio, TANJUG) b) dept. for the press (to control, criticize, and help the daily press) c) dept. for agitation (to prepare conferences, meetings, and oral agitation, and to fight enemy propaganda originating in Yugoslavia) d) dept for the struggle against foreign enemy propaganda 2: Theoretical Sector a) dept. for party schools and courses b) dept. for Marxist-Leninist education in mass organizations c) dept. for theoretical lectures (to collect materials, help lecturers)

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3: Cultural Sector a) dept. for film, theater, and music b) dept. for literature c) dept, for art d) dept. for cultural work in mass organizations 4: Organizational Sector (to deal with cadres, technical issues, and publishing) Djilas, "Svim CK-ima i PK-ima o reorganizaciji"; "O agitaciono-propagandim radu KPJ." In 1946, a radio committee was also formed under supervision of the central agitprop department to run Radio-Belgrade and to determine the line for radio stations in other republics. "Imenovanje clanova Radio komiteta," Politika, 5 July 1946; "Osnovni nedostaci, greSke, i propusti u programu nasih radio-stanica," 14 Nov. 1946, ACKSKJ, VIII II/S-c-74, 12. "Primjedbe uz nacrt plana," December 1945, HDA, CKKPHAP; Letter from Milovan Djilas to Agitprop CK KPH, 17 Jan. 1947, HDA, CKKPHAP; Letter to Agitprop CK KPJ in Belgrade, 21 Jan. 1946, HDA, CKKPHAP. 13. "Direktivno pismo CK KPJ upuieno svim CK-ima i PK-ima u vezi obeleiavanja 10-godisnjice smrti knjifevnika Maksima Gorkog," 16 May 1946, ACKSKJ, CKKPJAP VIII I/l-a-4. 14. Ibid. 15. Djilas, "Svim CK-ima i PK-ima o reorganizaciji." 16. Marko Lopusina, Crna kttjiga: Cenzura u Jugoslaviji, 1945—91 (Belgrade: Fokus, 1991), 224. 17. Natko Dev argued in favor of the continued existence of political parties, pointing out that "a party is only one part of a great whole . . . and never under any circumstances can it equate itself with the people and the state."87 As the party's grip on power tightened, however, its tolerance for such pluralism diminished. As a result, its rhetoric became increasingly directive and the Yugoslav population's willingness to participate in public life correspondingly declined. In the next phase of social transformation, from late 1945 to late 1947, CPY leaders ended all debate and focused their persuasive efforts directly on what they now saw as the most pressing tasks of economic renovation and construction.

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Notes 1. Josip Broz Tito, "Razgovor s Inostranim novinarima," Borba, 13 Aug. 1945, in Josip Broz Tito, Govori i (land, Vol. 2 (Zagreb: 1959), 21-24. 2. The Home Guards were the regular national armies of Croatia and Slovenia. While not specifically fascist organizations, they were subject to the command of the occupying armies during the war. In the spring of 1945 as the war drew to a close, many Croatian Home Guard units fled from the approaching Red Army and Partisan troops and, crossed the Austrian border where they surrendered to British troops. In accordance with wartime agreements, however, the British turned these units over to the Partisans who massacred them by the tens of thousands in the subsequent weeks. 3.Politika,2]an. 1946. 4. Indeed, in 1948 when Zdenka Segvifi prepared a retrospective report on the party press, she claimed that the best theoretical articles explaining the character of new Yugoslavia had come out in 1944 and 1945. Zdenka Sevgic, "Problem! nase stampe od oslobodjenja do danas i njezine slabosti," May 1948, ACKSKJ, VIII II/5-b-25. 5. Ibid.; Josip Cazi, "UCesce jedinstvenih sindikata u izbornoj borbi," Rad, 22 Sept. 1945. 6. "Reel MarSala draga Tita srpskom narodu Sumadije, " Rod, 23 June 1945. 7. Sta je i kakva treba da bude naSa komunistiCka partija," 15 Aug. 1945—but clearly written much earlier, between June 1941 and May 1943, HDA, CKKPH; "Partija i Narodni odbori," 1945, ACKSKJ, X2-IV/2. Milovan Djilas, "O medjunarodnoj i unutrasnjoj situaciji," 29 Sept. 1946, ACKSKJ, VIII IV-a-1. 8. "Govor druga Mihaila Svabica," 23-35 Jan. 1945, AJ, CV SSJ F1/J1-3; Cazi, "U&see jedinstvenih sindikata"; J. L. "Rad u sindkatima ne sme da ide na Stetu rada u Frontu," 20, oktobar, 18 May 1945. 9. "Drugi Plenum," 12 April 1945, AJ CV SSJ Fl-plenume; Milan /bugelj, "Prvi maj—opcenarodni praznik borbe i rada," Vjesnik, 28 April 1945. 10. Milovan Djilas, Speech at the Second Plenum of the USAOJ, 5-8 Sept. 1945, AJ, SSOJ-27. See also Milijan NeoreCic, "O radu USAOJ u selu," 5-8 Sept. 1945, AJ, SSOJ-27. 11. "Govor potpretsjednika Prezidijuma Narodne skupstine FNRJ Mole Pijade na mitingu biraca prvog rajona Beograda," Borba, 25 Oct. 1947; Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962), 30. 12. For a detailed description of this process see Jill Irvine, The Croat Question: Partisan Politics in the Formation of the Yugoslav Socialist State (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), and Zdenko Radelic, Hwatska seljaika strtmka, 1941-1950 (Zagreb: 1996). 13. For a more detailed accounting of the CPY's use of SeljoHhi sloga see Katarina Spehnjak, "Hrvatsko seljafiko prosvjetno droStvo 'Seljaika sloga'," Casopis za suwemenu povifest, 29, no. 1 (1997): 129-146. 14. Milovan Djilas, Interview with the author, Belgrade, 17 Nov. 1988; J. B. Tito, "Sednica CK KPJ sa birom CK KPH," 5 Dec. 1945, ACKSKJ, PB III/10. 15. List of quotes from Stjepan and Ante Radic, 1945, HDA, CKKPHAP; Djilas, Speech at the Second Plenum of the USAOJ; "Govor Vladimira Nazora," Slobodni dom, 18 Sept. 1945 (italics in the original).

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16. Veljko Vlahovic, "August 1941," manuscript, no date, ACKSKJ, LFWII/3-33; Veljko Vlahovic:, "Pripreme za Prvl Sveslovenski kongres," manuscript, no date, ACKSKJ, LFW H/3-56; "Prvi maj," Borba, 1 May 1945. 17. Serbs and Montenegrins felt a special affinity with Russia due both to their common Orthodox religion and to Russia's moral and, in some cases, military support in earlier struggles for independence from the Ottoman Empire. A somewhat less Russocentric form of Slavism had strong roots in the 19th-century lllyrianist movement in Croatia. Moreover, Croatia's extremely popular prewar politician, Stjepan Radii, had shown strong Slavic sentiments and had visited the Soviet Union despite his ideological differences with the Communists. Finally, nearly all citizens of Yugoslavia felt a degree of unity with and gratitude toward Russia as a result of their most recent common battle against the Germans. While impossible to prove, it also seems clear that many CPY leaders supported the Slavic movement because it appealed to them as much as it did to the population as a whole. In an interview with the author, Djilas, while denying his interest in the Slavic movement, admitted to strong feelings of Slavic sentiment, insisting that similar feelings of solidarity must exist between, for example, all AngloSaxons. Conversations with other Yugoslav citizens also suggested that the concept of Slavic solidarity is so culturally pervasive among the South Slavs that most consider it absolutely natural and not in need of any particular defense or explanation. Obviously, however, such sentiments have not prevented Slavs from warring against one another. 18. Josip Broz Tito, "Crkva treba da bude nacionalna," Borba, 6 May 1945. 19. "Govor patrijarha Gavrila u ime Srpske pravoslavne crkve," Politika, 12 Dec. 1946. If one replaces the term "Slavic" in this excerpt with "Anglo-Saxon" the absurdity of Djilas's claim in note 17 becomes evident. 20. Radmila Radifi, Verom protiv vere (Belgrade: IMS, 1995), 225. 21. Svetozar Rittig, "MarSal Tito na pozornici ratnih dogadjaja," Naprijed, 28 Aug. 1944; Svetozar Rittig, "Da se zadubimo u misli na5e NOB-e," Vjesnik, 20 June 1944. 22. For biographical information see Marija Soljan BakariC, ed., Kata Pejnomc; monografija (Zagreb: 1977); Milenko PredragoviC, Kata Pejnovic (Kragujevac: 1978). In contrast, during the war, any "frivolity" in women had been openly condemned and some women were apparently expelled from the CPY simply for wearing lipstick. Lydia Sklevicky, "Emancipated Integration or Integrated Emancipation: The Case of Post-Revolutionary Yugoslavia," unpublished manuscript, 4. 23. Josip Broz Tito, "O novirn zadadma fena," 16-19 June 1945, AJ, AFZ141-1-2. See also "Govor Marsala Tita na mitingu zena Srbije," Borba, 29 Jan. 1945. Indeed, AFW organizations were quite active in both social work and education, concentrating especially on the eradication of illiteracy not only among women but within the entire population. 24. According to statistics from 1948, for example, of all members of the Central Committees of Republican party organizations, less than 8 percent were women; only 3 out of 63 members of the Central Committee of the CPY elected at the Fifth Party Congress were women; and there were no women in the Polit-

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buro. Likewise, fewer than 4 percent of all the members of the government were women, and none of them were among the federal ministers of the government. It is also evident from only a cursory glance at the names that a great many—although by no means all—of the most prominent women in the party and government were the wives or relatives of prominent male figures. Among the women activists who were the wives or other relatives of prominent male figures were Mitra Mitrovic-Djilas, Vida Tomsic, Pepca Kardelj, Milica Dedijer, and Marija Soljan Bakaric. It is not my intent to belittle their skills or leadership capabilities, but only to suggest something about the atmosphere of the times and the difficulties for unaffiliated women to rise through the ranks. Infonnativni primlnik o Jugoslaviji, OpSti podaci o palitiUkom, privrednom, soeijalnom, kulturnom i pmsvetnom Zivotu u Federativnoj narodnoj republici Jugoslavsji, September 1948 (Belgrade: 1948-1951), 16; Statistics on women in the party and government, 1948, AJ, AFZ 141-13-71. 25. Braco Kosovac, "IzveStaj o pisanju tenskih listova," 1948, ACKSKJ, VIII II/5-b-26. Blazenka Miniica, "O nasim zenskim listovima," iena dams, 54 (May 1948). 26. Vladimir Dedijer, Veliki buntovnik Milovan Djilas, Prilozi za biogmfiju (Belgrade: 1991) 236; Milo Gligorijevic, Odgovor Mica Popovit (Belgrade: 1984), 49-53; Mitra Mitrovic, Interview with the author, Belgrade, 13 April 1988. 27. Rato Dugonjic, "Zapisnik sa sastanka CK SKOJ-a," 9 Aug. 1945, in Petar Kacavenda, ed., Kongresi, konferendje i sednice centralnih organa SKOJ-a (hereafter KKSKOJ, 1941-1948) (Belgrade: Izdavacki centar Komunist, 1984), 47. 28. See Milovan Djilas, "Povodom 27. godiSnjice Oktobarske revolucije," November 1944, in Milovan Djilas, Clanti, 1941-1946 (Belgrade: 1947), 141-152; Politicko-organizacioni izvjestaj OK SKOJ Biokovo-Neretva," 26 May 1945, and "Izvjestaj OK SKOJ Srednje Dalmacije," 29 May 1945, HDA, PKSKOJ-H; Report from Divisional Commander of KPH of 7th Shock Division of the JNA, 2 Aug. 1945, HDA, CKKPH; "Izvjeltaj OK KPH Banije," 9 April 1947, HDA, CKKPH. 29. Rato Dugonjic, "Omladina u novoj Jugoslaviji/' 13 May 1946, AJ, SSOJ-2; Branko Bogunovid, "NaSa mladost na pruzi," 2ewa danas, 49 0uly-August 1947). 30. "ZavrSeno je trefie zasedanje," Politika, 27 Aug. 1945; "Govor brojeva," Demokratija, 4 Oct. 1945; "Jedan jedini lik: sloboda," Demokratija, 1 Nov. 1945. See also numerous articles in Republika, especially in the summer of 1946. 31. "Govor Sretena 2ujovi£a/' Politika, 28 March 1945. 32. One of the first books to describe the massacre at Bleiburg was Borivoje Karapand2i6's Jugoslovensko krvavo prolece 1945: Titovi katini i gulazi (Belgrade: 1990). Since the breakup of Yugoslavia numerous memoir accounts about Bleiburg have emerged, including Ante Beljo, YU Genocide (Toronto and Zagreb: 1995); Vinko Nikolic, Tragedija se dogodih u Svibnju, 2 vols (Zagreb: 1995); Mirko Valentic, ed., Spomenica Bleiburg, 1945-1995 (Zagreb: 1995). As Danilovifi points out, however, the accuracy of such accounts is difficult to determine. Estimates of the numbers killed at Bleiburg vary from 60,000 to 250,000. Rajko Danilovic, Upotreba neprijatelja: Politilka sudjenja 1945—1991 u Jugoslaviji i (Valjevo: Valjevac, 1993), 90-91.

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33. The CPY's appreciation for the special qualities of youth was nothing new in the Communist or, for that matter, non-Communist world. On youth in the Soviet Union and other Communist countries see, among many others, V. I. Lenin, On Youth (Moscow: 1980); Jim Riordan, ed., Soviet Youth Culture (London: MacMillan Press, 1989); Isabel A. Tirado, Young Guard! The Communist Youth League, Petrograd 1917-1920 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988); Henry Gleitman, Youth in Revolt: The Failure of Communist Indoctrination in Hungary (New York: Free Europe Press, 1957); Paul Neuberg, The Hero's Children; The Post-War Generation in Eastern Europe (New York: William Morrow and Co. Inc., 1973). 34. "Osnovna programska nacela NFJ," Borba, 8 Aug. 1945. 35. My use of the term youth, as a particular phase in the life cycle, resembles that of psychologists and sociologists, while historians have traditionally been interested in particular generations of youth united by common key experiences. My research does not trace the development of any one generation over time but examines the influence of persistent styles and attitudes among successive generations of youth. I have deliberately avoided using the term youth culture both because its existence is a matter of scholarly dispute and because the term encompasses a broader set of criteria than are relevant to my argument. 36. Memo from the ministry of education to all federal units, 14 March 1945, AJ, MP-2; "Godisnjica gimnazija u Glim," excerpt from Naprijed, 8 March 1945, HDA, AFZ; "Nacrt jedinstvenog plana i programa za osnovnu skolu," 26 July 1945, AJ, KSN-77. 37. "Zapisnik sa sastanka PK SKOJ," 21 July 1945, HDA, PKSKOJ-H-1; "§kolska omladina u Tuzli ka2njava sluge okupatora," Politika, 25 June 1945. See also Milutin Baltic, "O srednjim skolama," 4 April 1945, AJ, SSOJ-55; "Nova ikola mora da omoguci zdravliji i bolji odnos nastavnika i djaka," Gins, 17 April 1945; "Zapisnike sastanka CK SKOJ-a," 24 April 1945, in KKSKOJ, 1941-1948,7-9; "Izvjestaj GK SKOJ Split," 1 June 1945, HDA, PKSKOJ-H-1; "Izvjestaj o radu srednjoSkolske omladine i pionira OK SKOJ Karlovac," 12 Aug. 1945, HDA, PKSKOJ-H-1. 38. "Izvestaj o radu Komisije za obnovu Univerziteta," 27 April 1945, in MomCilo Mitrovic' and Djordje Stankovi6, eds., Zapisnici i izveStaji univerzitetskog komiteta Komunisttfke e partije Srbije, 1945-1948 (hereafter ZIUKKPS) (Belgrade: 1985), 19-22; "Izvjestaj odbora NSO Hrvatske," 31 July 1945, HDA, PKSKOJ-H-1; "Studenti Zagrebackog univerziteta ciste svoje redove od ustaskih i fasistickih elemenata," Politika, 26 Jan. 1946; "Oslobodjeni beogradski univerzitet uklanja sve tragove ropstva i fasizma," Politika, 23 May 1945; "Osudjen je dr. Nikola Popovii bivsi rektor Beogradskog univerziteta za vreme okupacije," Politika, 11 May 1946; "Mesnom komitetu KPS," 5 March 1946, ZIUKKPS, 37-39. See also "Zapisnik sa sastanka PK SKOJ, 21 July 1945, HDA, PKSKOJ-H-1; Report from the Council of the NSO of Croatia, 31 July 1945, HDA, PKSKOJ-H-1; "Izvestaj o prosvetnim problemima," 31 Oct. 1945, ACKSKJ, VIII Vi/2-e-l. 39. "Nova skola mora da omoguci"; "GodiSnjica gimnazija u Glini." See also "Prilozi prvorn zapisniku Prosvetnog saveta pri MP savezne vlade," 6-16 Aug. 1945, AJ, MP-9; "Rezolucija sa prve konferencije studenata Beogradskog univerziteta," 14 June 1945, ZIUKKPS, 23-24. 40. "IzvjeStaj OK SKOJ Vara2din," 4 Aug. 1945, HDA, PKSKOJ-H-1.

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41. "Izvjestaj GK SKOJ Split," 1 June 1945; "Zapisnik sa sastanka CK SKOJ-a," 22 April 1946, KKSKO], 1941-1948, 176-177,182; "Referat Marice Kresojevic na sastanku komisije na srednje skole," May 1946, AJ, SSOJ-2"; Danilo Puric, "Savetovanje OK SKOJ-a po pitanju rada srednjih Skola," 1946, ACKSKJ, CKSKOJ II-a-2/3. 42. "Zapisnik sa sastanka PK SKOJ," 21 July 1945, HDA, PKSKOJ-H-1 (italics in the original); Starta Tomasevic, "Zadaci rada sa Skolskim omladinom," March 1945, AJ, SSOJ-27. 43. Stevo Doronjski, "Zaklju&i prosvetnog saveta," 5-8 Sept. 1945, AJ, SSOJ-27; Brana Perovie, "Zapisnik sa sastanka CK SKOJ-a," 20 Dec. 1945, KKSKO), 1941-1948, 92-98; Mitra Mitrovic, interview with the author, Belgrade, 13 April 1988. 44. "Zapisnik sa sastanka organizaeionih sekretara KK i GK SKOJ-a za Dalmaciju," 13 June 1946, HDA, PKSKOJ-H-2; "IzvjeStaj GK SKOJ Split," 1 June 1945; Cetvrti sastanak Pretsednlstva CV NOJ," 15-17 Sept. 1947, AJ, SSOJ-37. 45. "Human Rehabilitation of Children and Young People," 22 Feb. 1945, AJ, MP-3. 46. For information on Soviet cultural policies see Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky, October 1917-1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984); Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Denise J. Youngblood, Movies for the Masses, Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Youngblood's monograph includes a particularly interesting section on the "entertainment or enlightenment" debate of the 1920s. 47. Ivan Curl, "Muzika za pies," 16 Dec. 1946, HDA, CKKPH; Dusan Timotijevic, "NaS buduci domafi crtani film," Film, 2 (March 1947), 31-35. For more on the censorship of music see Marko Lopusina, Crna knjiga: Cenzura u Jugoslaviji (Belgrade: Fokus, 1991), 242-248. 48. See Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 49. Velibor Gligoric, "Zadaci knjizevne kritike u 1948 godini," Politika, I Jan. 1948. In an interesting contrast, the chief architect of Nazi propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, banned art criticism in 1936, insisting that it be replaced by art reporting, which "should not be concerned with values, but should confine itself to description [which] should give the public the right to make up its own mind." Peter Adam, Art in the Third Reich (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1992) 69. 50. Dusan Bilandzk:, Historija Sacijalistic'ke Federativne jugoslavije: Glawii procesi, 1918-1985 (Zagreb: Skolska knjiga, 1985), 88. 51. Vladimir Dedijer, Novi prilozi za biogmfiju fosipa Broza Tita, Vol. 3 (Belgrade: Rad, 1984), 218-219; "S glumcima kazalista narodnog oslobodjenja," Slobodna Dalmacija, 26 Aug. 1944. 52. For a discussion of Nazor's role in postwar efforts to create a "supranational Yugoslav culture" see Andrew Wachtel, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation:

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Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 149-151. 53. Marijan Stilinovic, "U borbi za kultumi preporod," 25 June 1944, Pnri kongres kuHurnih radnika Hruatske, Topusko, 25-27 juni 1944, Gradja (Zagreb: 1976), 69-71. 54. Ibid. 55. "Konkurs sa filmski scenario," Borba, 24 Aug. 1945; Radovan Zogovic, "Za mac i za pero!" Borba, 1 Dec. 1944, in Radovan Zogovic, Na popriStu (Belgrade: 1947), 113. 56. Branislav Miljkovic, "SocijalistiCki realizam u knjifevnosti," Republika, 27 Nov. 1945 and 4 Dec. 1945; Z. Cvetkovic", "Urnetnost i druStveni zivot," Republika, 29 Jan. 1946 and 5 Feb. 1946; Branislav Miljkovic, "Nekoliko reci o savremenom romanu," Republika, 26 Feb. 1946; Branislav Miljkovic', "Posle Kongresa knjizevnika," RepvUika, 10 Dec. 1946; Tvrtko Cubeli6, "Osvrt na glavnu smotru SeljaCke sloge," reprint from Vjesnik, 28 Sept. 1946, in Seljaika sloga (October 1946). 57. "Obnovljeno udru&nje likovnih umjetnika 'Zemlja'," Naprijed, 2 Jan. 1945; V. R. "LiJcovni zivot u oslobodjenoj Hrvatskoj," Naprijed, 25 April 1945. 58. By 1947 all members of the Writers' Union were supplied with R2 rationcards, the same as those given to skilled workers, while particularly influential writers got Rl cards, the highest available and the same as those given to workers employed in extremely important or dangerous industries. Zdenko Stambuk, "O naSoj knjiZevnosti i knjizevnim prilikama," Republika, 3, no. 3 (1947): 151; "Qsnovan Savez likovnih umetnika Jugoslavije," Borba, 8 Dec. 1947. Even so, artists in new Yugoslavia were not always satisfied with what they got. The Zagreb film director Mirko Lukavac has recalled that he once complained about the lack of resources to Croatia's minister of finance, Anka Berus. She was friendly but told him, "Do you realize, my dear, how much we need for schools, hospitals, and highways, for the renovation of destroyed rail lines and factories, not to mention all the other things. You go on home nicely now and be happy with what you have received." Mirko Lukavac, "Prvi dani kinematografije u SR Hrvatskoj (1945-1946)," Filmska kultura, 100 0uly 1975): 167. 59. "Miroslav Krleza. o Milovanu Djilasu i Radovanu Zogovic1 u," in Bnes Cengic, S Krlezom iz dana u dan (Zagreb: 1985-1990), 197-211; Milovan Djilas, Rise and Fall (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 48-49. 60. Djilas, Rise and Fall, 54-55. For more on the party's relations with Andric1 and his role in the effort to create a Yugoslav culture see Wachtel, 156-172. 61. Miroslav Krleza, "Knjizevnost danas," Republika, I , no. 1-2 (1945): 159; "Izvestaj o listovima koji izlaze u Hrvatskoj," 1946, ACKSKJ, VII! VI/1-6-21. 62. "Zbirka narodnih pjesama," Naprijed, 19 Dec. 1944; Dusan Kostii, "O jednoj 'poezijf koja nije poezija," 20. oktobar, 17 Aug. 1945. 63. Radovan Zogovii, "Pou&ta poredjenja," Borba, \ March 1945, in Zogovii, Na popriStu, 139. 64. Danilovii, 93-94. See also "U Beogradu je osnovano novo gradsko pozoriSte," Borba, 3 Oct. 1945; "Jovan Popovic koji je Beogradsko narodno pozoriSte stavio u sluzbu okupatoru usudjen je na 4 godine prinudnog rada," Politika, 6 Sept. 1946; "IzvjeStaj o radu radio-direkcije za Hrvatsku," 9 June 1946, HDA,

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CKKPHAP; Milomir Marie, "Prkosne strofe Radovana Zogovica," Part 2, Dwgfl, no, 312 (February 1986): 62. 65. Gligorijevic', 37-38. 66. Radovan Zogovifi, "Primjer kako ne treba praviti 'Primjere knji&vnosti'," Borba, 8 May 1947 in Zogovic, Na popriStu, 219-220; Marin Franicevic, "O nekim negativnim pojavama u savremenoj poeziji," Republika, no. 7-8 (July-August 1947), in Marin Frani&vic, Pisci iprobkmi (Belgrade: 1948), 271; LopuMna, 28. 67. Radovan Zogovic", "O kritici i o Beogradskom baletu," Borba, 16 October, 1946 in Zogovic, Na popristu, 172. 68. "$ta je i kakva treba da bude." 69. Slobodan Selenid, Otevi ioci (Belgrade: 1988), 254, 70. See, for example, Speech of Professor Ivo Babic at the First Congress of the NF Hrvatska, 13 Oct. 1946, HDA, RKSSRNH-1; Marjan KrMa, "Kulturno-prosvjetni zadaci i problemi," 1946, HDA, VSSH-1-KPO. 71. Zogovic was especially unforgiving and contemptuous of intellectuals, denouncing, in one article, "specialist fetishization," and insisting that "the people" knew perfectly well what was good and what was not in art. "O prosvetnim prilikama u FNRJ; Zogovic^ "O kritici i o Beogradskom baletu." See also Marie:, "Prkosne strofe Radovana Zogovica," parts 1-3; Dedijer, Novi prilozi, Vol. 3,129, 217-218; Stanko Lasic, Sukob na knjiievnoj Ijevici (Zagreb: 1970), 262-270; Gligorijevic', 29-30. A similar disdain for civic and urban culture could be seen in party rhetoric which portrayed the prototypical female follower of the opposition as an attractive, well-dressed, well-groomed woman of obvious bourgeois background. 72. "Zapisnik sa sastanka PK SKOJ," 21 July 1945; "Zapisnik sa sastanka KK SKOJ Sinj," 8 April 1946, HDA, PKSKOJ-H-2; Pismo OK SKOJ-a za Dalmadju," 18 Aug. 1948, ACKSKJ, CKSKOJII c-1/54. 73. "Article 25," Constitution of the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia (Belgrade: 1946). 74. Vitomir Vidakovifi, "Osnivac'ke skupStine pravoslavnog sveStenstva Jugoslavije," Vesnik, 1, no. 1 (March 1948). See also Milan D. Smiljanic, "Kojim putem?" Vesnik, I, no. 1 (March 1948). 75. Gligorijevic, 35-36; Ivan §ibl, Sjecanja: Poslijeratni dnevnik. Vol. 3 (Zagreb: 1986), 26-28. For other examples see Djoko Slijepfievifi, Istorija srpske pravoslaune crkve, Vol. 3 (Cologne: 1986), 176-181. 76. "Bo2i then acting as both minister of education and head of the agitprop department in Serbia. Mitrovic: later claimed that she had acted after receiving outraged phone calls from several politicians, including Mo§a Pijade, who shouted, "What is your theater doing? Are we really all thieves?"78 Fearing, she said, for the fate of the entire theater, she asked its manager and the play's director to pull the piece. "Conscious of my high party and state position, they took my 'suggestion' as a decree and withdrew the presentation from the repertoire."79 But if the theater's directors were willing to submit quietly to such official interference, other cultural figures were not. Within weeks, literary critic Eli Finci denounced the withdrawal in the new Belgrade journal Svedocanstvo as a "ban on laughter." Drenovac then responded with a strong defense of MitrovM's action in KnjiZevne novine. Indeed, as Ratko

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Pekovi£ argues, the controversy around The Ball of Thieves was really only an excuse for a confrontation between the two journals and their conflicting cultural concepts.80 Mitrovic' finally ended the debate, though not the mutual hostility, by publishing her own explanation and self-defense.81 Although Mitrovic later admitted that she had actually agreed with Find, at the time she concurred with Drenovac in criticizing Finci's attitude that once the party had opened up the ideological struggle, Communists should no longer be able to express their views. Had Finci stuck to arguments about dogmatism in art, bad repertoire policies, or even undeveloped taste, she insisted, it would have been fine. It became clear to her, however, that even had she only offered her opinion, Finci would have rejected it simply because it came from a state functionary. Thus, she concluded, Finci's struggle against bureaucratization really came down to "preventing communists from defending their concepts simply because they hold this or that state or party function."82 The assessment may have been correct, but it is also true that by asking the theater to withdraw the piece in her official capacity as minister of education, Mitrovic had revealed to all the continued ambiguity of the party's position and its apparent inability to achieve its ends solely by means of persuasion.8*3 Perhaps seeking to minimize the damage to his reforms without giving up the ideological struggle, Djilas now entered the fray with an article in Knjizevne novine. Although his piece represented an unambiguous attack on an article by Aleksander Vuc'o in Svedoianstvo and indeed on the journal itself, Djilas prefaced his remarks with a lengthy caveat. He had been planning to publish his article in Knjizeyne novine for some time, he explained, but had been told that given the ongoing polemics between the two journals, it might look as though he were officially endorsing Knjizevne novine's views. He had then briefly considered publishing his critique in SvedoCanstvo, but had decided against it since he really did not support its positions. After further delays he had finally decided to go ahead with the article in Knjiievne novine but wanted to make it clear at the start that it did not represent an official attack on Svedo£anstvo.m The conflict finally ended when both journals ceased publication in the fall of 1952.85 Editors from both journals (although more from Knjiievne novine) then sought to overcome their hostility through joint participation in Nova misao, an all-Yugoslav journal dedicated to questions of science, philosophy, and art that published its first issue in January 1953. According to Djilas, Nova misao, though Marxist in its perspective, would be anti-dogmatic and would "analyze their inherited stock of ideas." Indeed, in the course of the following year, Nova misao became increasingly adventurous in its concepts and stimulated much ideological and intel-

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lectual ferment among party members. But as articles for Nova misao increasingly occupied the time and attention of Djilas and other persuasive activists, the agitprop department itself "faded away as a bureaucratic party organization,"86 The Response by Agitprop Departments

Without question, the new reforms had seriously confused any understanding of the role and function of agitprop departments. How could they work to "channel correctly the aspirations of the populace for culture," once the party had given up its cultural monopoly and if its leaders now spoke out only as equal participants in the struggle of opinions? This dilemma, clearly evident though never openly discussed in debates at the top, also explains the behavior of the members of agitprop departments at middle and lower levels of the party. In the first year after the reorganization of the party and its agitprop departments, internal and public documents reported numerous instances of both under- and overreaction to the new policies. Many bemoaned the continued absence of a struggle of opinions and complained that everything was still accepted from above without thought.87 Others, however, worried about trends toward passivity and demoralization in response to the new policies. As early as January 1951, for example, an article by Drenovac in Partijska izgradnja complained of stagnation in agitprop departments, noting that while many organizations had ceased working "in the old way," they had not yet begun to work "in the new way." Likewise, an internal report from Ms remarked that some members seemed to think that the new policies simply meant less work. "Committees have grasped that they can no longer lead in the old ways, but it is not sufficiently clear to them how to establish the leadership system on new bases and simultaneously carry out all the economic tasks before them (the otkup and so on)."88 By late 1952, the trend toward passivism had apparently triumphed over blind subordination to directives. Several reports now complained that while a few local and district committees still worked in the old ways, addressing in detail questions that ought to be left to other organs, most had lost interest even in those issues that ought to concern them, apparently believing that everything they had done in the past was no good. Fears of violating socialist democracy, one report complained, now led many members to react with complete indifference when confronted with enemy actions. Worst of all, the new policies had even affected internal party discipline. Some party committees, the reports claimed, now believed that they could, but did not have to, carry out the decisions of the upper leadership, while their members showed similar laxity and of-

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ten neglected to attend meetings, pay dues, or carry out specific assignments.89 The end result, then, of the party reforms in the field of persuasion and culture was precisely the opposite of what had been intended. As with social ownership of property, what the party proclaimed to be everyone's responsibility soon became no one's. Rather than involving all loyal Yugoslavs in the transformation of society, the new reforms had only led to a sense of demoralization among party members who simply could not figure out how they were simultaneously to "play fair" and "win at all costs." Yet, the decline in party persuasion came not only because the rules of the game had changed; it also reflected an evolving sense of what kind of victory might be possible. A further, and in many ways more profound, effect of the party's reforms was to diminish its expectations for culture as a means of propaganda and to delay (if not derail altogether) its hopes of creating new people with new values, beliefs, and behavioral norms. The party's evolution toward this less ambitious but more pragmatic approach may be seen in a series of debates about youth and culture that developed in the period from 1950 to 1953. Notes 1. See, for example, Dennison Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment, 1948—1974 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 32. 2. In the same month Kardelj, speaking to the Slovene Academy of Sciences, criticized Soviet science and argued for freedom in the field of scientific creation. Predrag J. Markovic, Beograd izmedju istoka i zapada, 1948-1965 (Belgrade: 1996), 325. 3. Milovan Djilas, Rise and fall (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 260-261. 4. Milovan Djilas, "Problem skolstva u borbi za socijalizam u nasoj zemlji," at the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPY held 29-30 Dec. 1949, in Branko Petranovic, Ranko KonCar, and Radovan Radonjid, eds., Sednice Centralnog komiteta KPJ (1948-1952) (Belgrade: Izdava&i centar Komunist, 1985), 295. 5. Ibid, 289. 6. Ibid., 292. 7. Ibid., 295-296. 8. Ibid., 293. 9. Ibid., 300,307-308. 10. Ibid., 302. 11. Ibid., 312-314. Kardelj's speech to the Third Plenum focused mainly on foreign policy, but he did urge the press to be less sectarian in its treatment of Yugoslavia's relations with the West. Ibid., 474-475.

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12. Dr. Ivo Babifi, Report on the work of the Ministry of Education of Croatia in 1949, 1950, AJ, MNK F61; Dj. Bogojevic, "Mostarska oblast—primer pravilnog sprovodjenja odluka tre^eg plenurna CK KPJ," Borba, 5 April 1950, p. 2; "Zapisnik sa sastanka odrzanog u UFA CK KPJ za drugovima iz SK Mostar," 10 April 1950, ACKSKJ, VIII H/2-b-30; "IzveStaj o obilasku partiske organizacije u AP Vojvodini," 6-30 April 1950, ACKSKJ, V-KIV/62. 13. Nikola Sekulic:, "Prosvetni problemi i Skolstvo," at Cetvrto plenarno zasedanje CKKPH, held 17 April 1950, SocialistiCki front, 3, no. 3 (June 1950): 10-45; "Rezoludja o Skolstvu," from Cetvrto plenarno zasedanje CKKPH, held 17 April 1950, SociaUsticki front, 3, no. 3 (June 1950); 3-8. 14. "Rezolucija Trece interfakultetske konferencije pravnih fakulteta o ideoloSkom i strufinom uzdizanju nastava," Politika, 20 Jan. 1950, p. 2; "Informacija o problemima u vezi sprovodjenja odluka III plenum CK KPJ u organizacijama Narodne omladine na univerzitetima," June 1950, AJ, SSOJ F330. See also Veljko Vlahovi6, "Kulturno-prosvjetna politika partije," no date, 1950?, ACKSKJ, LFW II/4-d-l; "O nekirn ideolo§ko-politi£kim i unutarpartiskim pitanjirna, na osnovu zakljucaka CK KP Crne Gore," no date, ACKSKJ, V-KV/27. 15. In fact, party leaders created workers' councils as a first step toward the later self-management reforms already in December 1949. At that point, however, they were limited in scope and apparently intended mainly as an experimental measure. Letter to all Central Committees from Organizational-Instructors Bureau, 21 Dec. 1949, ACKSKJ, V-KI/66. 16. Veljko Vlahovic, "O radu odeljenja za agitaciju i propaganda," Partijska izgradnja, 9-10 (1949): 13-19. 17. Miso Pavi&vie', "Neposredni zadaci ideoloSko-politiCkog rada u sindikatima," at X Plenum CV SSJ, 11-12 Dec. 1949, AJ, CVSSJ F17; Mirko Milojkovic, "Organizacioni problemi kulturno-prosvetnog rada," no date, 1949-1950?, AJ, CVSSJ F83 KPO. 18. "Povodom jedne beleSke," Borba, 5 March 1950,5. 19. Veljko Vlahovic, "Predmet: Partiska izgradnja," 16 May 1950, ACKSKJ, VIII IV/a-16. 20. Veljko Vlahovic, "Zapisnik sa sastanka Plenuma Komisije za agitaciju i Itampu Saveznog odbora NFJ," 29 May 1950, AJ, SSRNJ 142-27-82. 21. Vlahovic:, "Kulturno-prosvjetna politika partije." 22. Milovan Djilas, "Savetovanje propagandista," 6 May 1950, ACKSKJ, VIII II/2-d-20; Milovan Djilas, "Nasa dosadasnja iskustva u borbi za socijalizam," Savremene teme (Belgrade: Borba, 1950), 41-50. 23. Rusinow, 57-59. 24. "Pismo o radu i ulozi sreskih komiteta," 22 June 1950, ACKSKJ, II-KI/59; Odluke i direktive CK KPJ, Svirn Centralnim komitetima KP Republika," 22 June 1950, Partijska izgradnja, 6 (1950): 55-60. 25. "Informacije o radu Narodnog fronta Jugoslavije od V. Kongresa pa do danas," 1953, ACKSKJ, XII10/3 and AJ, SSRNJ 142-3-10; Bdvard Kardelj, "Uloga i zadaci SodjalistiCkog saveza radnog naroda Jugoslavije u borbi za socijalizam," Speech at IV Kongres NFJ, 23 Feb. 1953, Komunist, 5, no. 2-3 (1953): 104.

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26. "Informacije o radu Narodnog fronta Jugoslavije"; Kardelj, "Uloga i zadaci SocijalistiCkog saveza radnog naroda Jugoslavije"; Krsto Popivoda, "IzveStaj o radu NFJ," 23 Feb. 1953, A], SSRNJ 142-3-10, 27. "Informacije o radu Narodnog fronta Jugoslavije"; Kardelj, "Uloga i zadaci SocijalisKkog saveza radnog naroda Jugoslavije." Also, like the party, the PFY now took steps to reduce its administrative apparatus. A meeting of the Executive Council of the People's Front in late June 1950 thus reduced the number of its commissions from 13 to 7 and the size of its professional apparatus from 26 to 17. "Zapisnik sednice Sekretarijata Izvrsnog odbora NFJ," 29 June 1950, AJ, SSRNJ 142-20-65, 28. Blagoje NeSkovic", "Stenografske beleske: Sednica Sekretarijata IzvrSnog odbora NFJ," 23 Oct. 1950, AJ, SSRNJ 142-20-65. Neskovic's criticism of the role of the party within the Front is perhaps unsurprising given his ambivalent response to Stalin's attack on the CPY, which had specifically accused the party of hiding behind the Front and failing to carry out its leading role. According to Djilas, NeSkovic' had initially suggested that the CPY should attend the Cominform meeting, had rejected the idea of ever fighting the Red Army, and maintained his devotion to Stalin long after the split. Despite all this, party leaders did not move against him immediately; by late 1952, however, after Neskovic expressed his opposition to improving relations with the West, he was expelled from the party and returned to his prewar occupation as a laboratory physician. Djilas, Rise and Fall, 199-201, 219-221; Svetozar Vukmanovid-Tempo, Revoludja koja tece: Memoari, Book 2, (Belgrade: 1971), 94. Even so, there is no evidence that Neskovic's line on party/front relations was, at that time, out of step with the rest of the party leadership. 29. Memo to all CKs from A. Rartkovic", 14 Oct. 1950, ACKSKJ, VIII I/l-a-12. Already since March 1949 the departments had been called Uprave za agitaciju i propagandu, and in fact, agitprop documents even after 1950 often referred to them by that title rather than as the Uprave za propagandu i agitaciju. For the sake of simplicity I will continue to refer to it as the central agitprop department. 30. Ibid. 31. "Zapisnik sednice Sekretarijata IzvrSnog odbora NFJ," 29 June 1950, AJ, SSRNJ 142-20-65; "Zapisnik sednice Sekretarijata IzvrSnog odbora NFJ, 23 Oct. 1950, AJ, SSRNJ 142-20-65; Djuka Julius, "Problem! politifiko-prosvjetaog rada u Narodnom frontu," no date, AJ, SSRNJ 142-27-83. 32. Bora Drenovac, "O reorganizaciji agitpropa," Partijska izgradnja, 1 (1951): 46-54. 33. "Zaklju&i sa sastanka o problemima u novinarstvu odrzanog u Agitpropu," 2 June 1950, ACKSKJ, VIII II/2-b-31; "Zapisnik sa sastanka Uprava za agitaciju i propagandu CK KPJ, 16 Oct. 1950, ACKSKJ, VIII II/2-b-39. 34. Olga Biljanovi^, "Kvalitet Itampe—osnovno merilo u njeno rasturanju," 5 Nov. 1950, ACKSKJ, VIII II/5-b-51; Memo about distribution of the press, 10 Oct. 1950, ACKSKJ, VIII II/5-b-50; Memo to all CKs from Milovan Djilas, 10 Oct. 1950, ACKSKJ, VIII I/l-a-11. 35. "Zapisnik sa sastanka o Stampi," 2 Dec. 1950, ACKSKJ, VII! U/2-b-41. 36. "Peta sednica Saveznog ve